PS U1-} 0% Vr ,}.
3 9007 0344 8997 1
Date Due
nsr^
nniy
n CTl srr
*» <*
^jKy'J
,^>i^ „ ^; ffr
m^-^^
SC PACIL f^
rt - > '>"nQ
York Form — Cooper Graphics
•fll5^)^°'
THE IRON HEEL
BY
JACK LONDON
AUTHOR OF "the CALL OF THE ^VILD,'
" WHITE FANG," ETC.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
All rights reserved
P5
CoPTRionT, 1907,
By jack LONDON.
Set up and electrotyped. Published February, 1908. Reprinted
March, 1908.
NortooDfi ^rtss
J. 8. Gushing Co. — Btntick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
"At first, this Earth, a stage so gloomed with woe
You almost sicken at the shifting of the scenes.
And yet be patient. Our Playwright may show
In some fifth act what this Wild Drama means."
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2009 with funding from
Ontario Council of University Libraries
http://www.archive.org/details/ironheelOOIond
CONTENTS
TAGK
Foreword ix
CHAPTEK
I. My Eagle 1
II. Challenges 22
m. Johnson's Arm , . 43
IV. Slaves of the IMaciiine 59
V. The Philomaths 78
VI. Adumbrations 100
Vn. The Bishop's Vision Ill
VIII. The Machine Breakers 120
IX. The Mathematics of a Dream .... 141
X. The Vortex 163
XI. The Great Adventure 177
Xn. The Bishop 188
Xin. The. General Strike 204
XTV. The Beginning of the End 217
XV. Last Days 229
XVI. The End 237
XVII. The Scarlet Livery 251
XVin. In the Shadow of Sonoma 262
XTX. Transformation 274
XX. A Lost Oligarch 286
XXI. The Roaring Abysmal Beast 297
XXII. The Chicago Commune 306
XXIII. The People of the Abyss 324
XXIV. Nightmare 343
XXV. The Terrorists 352
vu
FOREWORD
It cannot be said that the Everhard Mar.u.^-Tip:
is an important historical document. To thv :.:-* ::.,::
it bristles with errors — not errors of fact, but errors
of interpretation. Looking back across the seven cen-
turies that have lapsed since Avis Everhard completed
her manuscript, events, and the bearings of events,
that were confused and veiled to her, are clear to us.
She lacked perspective. She was too close to the events
she writes about. Nay, she was merged in the events
she has described.
Nevertheless, as a personal document, the Everhard
Manuscript is of inestimable value. But here again
enter error of perspective, and vitiation due to the bias
of love. Yet we smile, indeed, and forgive A^-is Ever-
hard for the heroic lines upon which she modell: i h^r
husband. We know to-day that he was not so c : 1 : ss .1.
and that he loomed among the events of his tinv:? ::-?
largely than the Manuscript would lead us :, Cv-:-ve.
We know that Ernest Everhard was an exceptionally
strong man, but not so exceptional as his wife thought
him to be. He was, after all, but one of a lurj ; :: :r:.': : r
of heroes who, throughout the world, devoted their
lives to the Revolution; though it must be conceded
ix
X FOREWORD
that he did unusual work, especially in his elaboration
and interpretation of working-class philosophy. ''Pro-
letarian science" and ''proletarian philosophy" were
his phrases for it, and therein he shows the provincial-
ism of his mind — a defect, however, that was due to
the times and that none in that day could escape.
But to return to the Manuscript. Especially valu-
able is it in communicating to us the feel of those terrible
times. Nowhere do we find more vividly portrayed
the psychology of the persons that lived in that turbu-
lent period embraced between the years 1912 and 1932
— their mistakes and ignorance, their doubts and fears
and misapprehensions, their ethical delusions, their
violent passions, their inconceivable sordidness and self-
ishness. These are the things that are so hard for us
of this enlightened age to understand. History tells
us that these things were, and biology and psychology
tell us why they were ; but history and biology and psy-
chology do not make these things alive. We accept
them as facts, but we are left without sympathetic
comprehension of them.
This sympathy comes to us, however, as we peruse
the Everhard Manuscript. We enter into the minds of
the actors in that long-ago world-drama, and for the
time being their mental processes are our mental pro-
cesses. Not alone do we understand Avis Everhard's
love for her hero-husband, but we feel, as he felt,
in those first days, the vague and terrible loom of the
FOREWORD xi
01iga^ch3^ The Iron Heel (well named) we feel de-
scending upon and crushing mankind.
And in passing we note that that historic phrase,
the Iron Heel, originated in Ernest Everhard's mind.
This, we may say, is the one moot question that this
new-found document clears up. Previous to this, the
earliest-known use of the phrase occurred in the pam-
phlet, ^'Ye Slaves," writtep-^by George Milford and
published in December, (.1912. This George Milford
was an obscure agitator about whom nothing is known,
save the one additional bit of information gained from
the Manuscript, which mentions that he was shot in the
Chicago Commune. Evidently he had heard Ernest
Everhard make use of the phrase in some public speech,
most probably when he was running for Congress in the
fall of 1912. From the Manuscript we learn that Ever-
hard used the phrase at a private dinner in the spring
of 1912. This is, without discussion, the earliest-known
occasion on which the Oligarchy was so designated.
The rise of the Oligarchy will always remain a cause
of secret wonder to the historian and the philosopher.
Other great historical events have their place in social
evolution. The}^ were inevitable. Their coming could
have been predicted with the same certitude that as-
tronomers to-day predict the outcome of the move-
ments of stars. Without these other great historical
events, social evolution could not have proceeded.
Primitive communism, chattel slavery, serf slavery,
xii FOREWORD
and wage slavery were necessary stepping-stones in the
evolution of society. But it were ridiculous to assert
that the Iron Heel was a necessary stepping-stone.
Rather, to-day, is it adjudged a step aside, or a step
backward, to the social tyrannies that made the early
world a hell, but that were as necessary as the Iron Heel
was unnecessary.
Black as Feudalism was, yet the coming of it was
inevitable. What else than Feudalism could have fol-
lowed upon the breakdown of that great centralized
governmental machine known as the Roman Empire?
Not so, however, with the Iron Heel. In the orderly
procedure of social evolution there was no place for it.
It was not necessary, and it was not inevitable. It
must always remain the great curiosity of history — a
whim, a fantasy, an apparition, a thing unexpected and
undreamed ; and it should serve as a warning to those
rash political theorists of to-day who speak with cer-
titude of social processes.
Capitalism was adjudged by the sociologists of the
time to be the culmination of bourgeois rule, the ripened
fruit of the bourgeois revolution. And we of to-day
can but applaud that judgment. Following upon
Capitalism, it was held, even by such intellectual and
antagonistic giants as Herbert Spencer, that Socialism
would come. Out of the decay of self-seeking capital-
ism, it was held, would arise that flower of the ages,
the Brotherhood of Man. Instead of which, appalling
FOREWORD xiii
alike to us who look back and to those that lived at the
time, capitalism, rotten-ripe, sent forth that monstrous
offshoot, the Oligarchy.
x^^oo late did the socialist movement of the early^
twentieth century divine the coming of the Oligarchy.
Even as it was divined, the Ohgarchy was there — a fact ;
established in blood, a stupendous and awful reality. J
^or even then, as the Everhard Manuscript well shows,
was any permanence attributed to the Iron Heel. Its
overthrow was a matter of a few short years, was the
judgment of the revolutionists. It is true, they realized
that the Peasant Revolt was unplanned, and that the
First Revolt was premature ; but they little realized
that the Second Revolt, planned and mature, was
doomed to equal futility and more terrible punishment.
It is apparent that Avis Everhard completed the
Manuscript during the last days of preparation for the
Second Revolt ; hence the fact that there is no mention
of the disastrous outcome of the Second Revolt. It is
quite clear that she intended the Manuscript for imme-
diate publication, as soon as the Iron Heel was over-
thrown, so that her husband, so recently dead, should
receive full credit for all that he had ventured and ac-
complished. Then came the frightful crushing of the
Second Revolt, and it is probable that in the moment of
danger, ere she fled or was captured by the Mercenaries,
she hid the Manuscript in the hollow oak at Wake
Robin Lodge.
xiv FOREWORD
Of Avis Everhard there is no further record. Un-
doubtedly she was executed by the Mercenaries ; and,
as is well known, no record of such executions was kept
by the Iron Heel. But little did she realize, even then,
as she hid the Manuscript and prepared to flee, how
terrible had been the breakdown of the Second Revolt.
Little did she realize that the tortuous and distorted
evolution of the next three centuries would compel a
Third Revolt and a Fourth Revolt, and many Revolts,
all drowned in seas of blood, ere the world-movement
of labor should come into its own. And little did she
dream that for seven long centuries the tribute of her
love to Ernest Everhard would repose undisturbed in
the heart of the ancient oak at Wake Robin Lodge.
Anthony Meredith.
ArDI3,
November 27, 419 B.O.M.
THE IRON HEEL
THE IRON HEEL
CHAPTER I
MY EAGLE
The soft summer wind stirs the redwoods, and Wild-
Water ripples sweet cadences over its mossy stones.
There are butterflies in the sunshine, and from every-
where arises the drowsy hum of bees. It is so quiet
and peaceful, and I sit here, and ponder, and am rest-
less. It is the quiet that makes me restless. It seems
unreal. All the world is quiet, but it is the quiet before
the storm. I strain my ears, and all my senses, for
some betrayal of that impending storm. Oh, that it
may not be premature ! That it may not be premature ! ^
Small wonder that I am restless. I think, and think,
and I cannot cease from thinking. I have been in the
thick of life so long that I am oppressed by the peace and
quiet, and I cannot forbear from dwelling upon that
^ The Second Revolt was largely the work of Ernest Everhard,
though he cooperated, of course, with the European leaders. The
capture and secret execution of Everhard was the great event of the
spring of 1932 a.d. Yet so thoroughly had he prepared for the re-
volt, that his fellow-conspirators were able, with little confusion or
delay, to carry out his plans. It was after Everhard' s execution that
his wife went to Wake Robin Lodge, a small bungalow in the Sonoma
Hills of California.
B 1
2 THE IRON HEEL
mad maelstrom of death and destruction so soon to
burst forth. In my ears are the cries of the stricken ;
and I can see, as I have seen in the past/ all the marring
and mangling of the sweet, beautiful flesh, and the souls
torn with violence from proud bodies and hurled to
God. Thus do we poor humans attain our ends, striv-
ing through carnage and destruction to bring lasting
peace and happiness upon the earth.
And then I am lonely. When I do not think of
what is to come, I think of what has been and is no
more — my Eagle, beating with tireless wings the void,
soaring toward what was ever his sun, the flaming ideal
of human freedom. I cannot sit idly by and wait the
great event that is his making, though he is not here
to see. He devoted all the years of his manhood to it,
and for it he gave his life. It is his handiwork. He
made it.^
And so it is, in this anxious time of waiting, that I
shall write of my husband. There is much light that I
alone of all persons living can throw upon his character,
and so noble a character cannot be blazoned forth too
brightly. His was a great soul, and, when my love
grows unselfish, my chiefest regret is that he is not here
^ Without doubt she here refers to the Chicago Commune.
^ With all respect to Avis Everhard, it must be pointed out that
Everhard was but one of many able leaders who planned the Second
Revolt. And we, to-day, looking back across the centuries, can
safely say that even had he hved, the Second Revolt would not have
been less calamitous in its outcome than it was.
MY EAGLE 3
to witness to-morrow's dawn. We cannot fail. He
has built too stoutly and too surely for that. Woe to
the Iron Heel ! Soon shall it be thrust back from off
prostrate humanity. When the word goes forth, the
labor hosts of all the world shall rise. There has been
nothing like it in the history of the world. The solidar-
ity of labor is assured, and for the first time will there
be an international revolution wide as the world is
wide.^
You see, I am full of what is impending. I have
lived it day and night utterly and for so long that it
is ever present in my mind. For that matter, I can-
not think of my husband without thinking of it. He
was the soul of it, and how can I possibly separate the
two in thought ?
As I have said, there is much light that I alone can
throw upon his character. It is well known that he
toiled hard for liberty and suffered sore. How hard
he toiled and how greatly he suffered, I well know ; for
I have been with him during these twenty anxious years
and I know his patience, his untiring effort, his infinite
* The Second Revolt was truly international. It was a colossal
plan — too colossal to be wTought by the genius of one man alone.
Labor, in all the oligarchies of the world, was prepared to rise at the
signal. Germany, Italy, France, and all Australasia were labor
countries — socialist states. They were ready to lend aid to the
revolution. Gallantly they did ; and it was for this reason, when the
Second Revolt was crushed, that they, too, were crushed by the united
oligarchies of the world, their socialist governments being replaced
by oligarchical governments.
4 THE IRON HEEL
devotion to the Cause for which, only two months gone,
he laid down his life.
I shall try to write simply and to tell here how Ernest
Everhard entered my life — how I first met him, how
he grew until I became a part of him, and the tre-
mendous changes he wrought in my life. In this way
may you look at him through my ej'es and learn him
as I learned him — in all save the things too secret
and sweet for me to tell.
^"Tt was in February, 1912, that I first met him, when,
as a guest of my father's ^ at dinner, he came to our
house in Berkeley. I cannot say that my very first
impression of him was favorable. He was one of many
at dinner, and in the drawing-room where we gathered
and waited for all to arrive, he made a rather incongru-
ous appearance. It was ''preacher's night," as my
father privately called it, and Ernest was certainly out
of place in the midst of the churchmen.
In the first place, his clothes did not fit him. He
wore a ready-made suit of dark cloth that was ill
adjusted to his body. In fact, no ready-made suit of
* John Cimningham, Avis Everhard' s father, was a professor at the
State University at Berkeley, CaUfornia. His chosen field was phys-
ics, and in addition he did n^uch original research and was greatly
distinguished as a scientist. His chief contribution to science was his
studies of the electron and his monumental work on the " Identifica-
tion of Matter and Energy," wherein he established, beyond cavil
and for all time, that the ultimate unit of matter and the ultimate unit
of force were identical. This idea had been earlier advanced, but not
demonstrated, by Sir Oliver Lodge and other stiidents in the new
field of radio-activity.
MY EAGLE 6
clothes ever could fit his body. And on this night, as
always, the cloth bulged with his muscles, while the
coat between the shoulders, what of the heavy shoulder-
development, was a maze of wrinkles. His neck was
the neck of a prize-fighter,^ thick and strong. So this
was the social philosopher and ex-horseshoer my father
had discovered, was my thought. And he certainly
looked it with those bulging muscles and that bull-
throat. Immediately I classified him — a sort of
prodigy, I thought, a Blind Tom ^ of the working class.
And then, when he shook hands with me ! His hand-
shake was firm and strong, but he looked at me boldly
with his black eyes — too boldly, I thought. You see,
I was a creature of environment, and at that time had
strong class instincts. Such boldness on the part of a
man of my own class would have been almost unfoi>
givable. I know that I could not avoid dropping my
eyes, and I was quite relieved when I passed him on
and turned to greet Bishop Morehouse — a favorite of
mine, a sweet and serious man of middle age. Christ-
like in appearance and goodness, and a scholar as
well.
But this boldness that I took to be presumption was
a vital clew to the nature of Ernest Everhard. He was
* In that day it was the custom of men to compete for purses of
money. They fought with their hands. When one was beaten into
insensibility or killed, the survivor took the money.
^ This obscure reference applies to a blind negro musician who
took the world by storm in the latter half of the nineteenth century
of the Christian Era.
6 THE IRON HEEL
simple, direct, afraid of nothing, and he refused to waste
time on conventional mannerisms. ^' You pleased me,"
he explained long afterward; ''and why should I not
fill my eyes with that which pleases me?" I have
said that he was afraid of nothing. He was a natural
aristocrat — and this in spite of the fact that he was
in the camp of the non-aristocrats. He was a super-
man, a blond beast such as Nietzsche * has described,
and in addition he was aflame Avith democracy.
In the interest of meeting the other guests, and what
of my unfavorable impression, I forgot all about the
working-class philosopher, though once or twice at
table I noticed him — especially the twinkle in his eye
as he listened to the talk first of one minister and then
of another. He has humor, I thought, and I almost
forgave him his clothes. But the time went by, and
the dinner went by, and he never opened his mouth to
speak, while the ministers talked interminably about
the working class and its relation to the church, and
what the church had done and was doing for it. I
noticed that my father was annoyed because Ernest
did not talk. Once father took advantage of a lull
and asked him to say something ; but Ernest shrugged
his shoulders and with an ''I have nothing to say" went
on eating salted almonds.
'•■ Friedrich Nietzsche, the mad philosopher of the nineteenth cen-
tury of the Christian Era, who caught wild glimpses of truth, but who,
before he was done, reasoned himself around the great circle of hu-
man thought and off into madness.
MY EAGLE 7
But father was not to be denied. After a while he
said:
"We have with us a member of the working class.
I am sure that he can present things from a new point
of view that will be interesting and refreshing. I refer
to Mr. Everhard."
The others betrayed a well-mannered interest, and
urged Ernest for a statement of his views. Their atti-
tude toward him was so broadly tolerant and kindly
that it was really patronizing. And I saw that Ernest
noted it and was amused. He looked slowly about
him, and I saw the glint of laughter in his eyes.
"I am not versed in the courtesies of ecclesiastical
controversy," he began, and then hesitated with
modesty and indecision.
''Go on," they urged, and Dr. Hammerfield said:
''We do not mind the truth that is in any man. If it
is sincere," he amended.
"Then you separate sincerity from truth?" Ernest
laughed quickly.
Dr. Hammerfield gasped, and managed to answer,
"The best of us may be mistaken, young man, the best
of us."
Ernest's manner changed on the instant. He became
another man.
"All right, then," he answered; "and let me begin
by saying that you are all mistaken. You know noth-
ing, and worse than nothing, about the working class.
8 THE IRON HEEL
Your sociology is as vicious and worthless as is your
method of thinking."
It was not so much what he said as how he said it.
I roused at the first sound of his voice. It was as bold
as his eyes. It was a clarion-call that thrilled me.
And the whole table was aroused, shaken alive from
monotony and drowsiness.
''What is so dreadfully vicious and worthless in our
method of thinking, young man?" Dr. Hammerfield
demanded, and already there was something unpleasant
in his voice and manner of utterance.
''You are metaphysicians. You can prove any-
thing by metaphj^sics ; and having done so, every
metaphysician can prove every other metaphysician
wrong — to his own satisfaction. You are anar-
chists in the realm of thought. And you are mad
cosmos-makers. Each of you dwells in a cosmos of
his own making, created out of his own fancies and
desires. You do not know the real world in which
you live, and your thinking has no place in the real
world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental
aberration.
"Do you know what I was reminded of as I
sat at table and listened to you talk and talk?
You reminded me for all the world of the scholas-
tics of the Middle Ages who gravely and learnedly
debated the absorbing question of how many angels
could dance on the point of a needle. Why, my dear
MY EAGLE 9
sirs, you are as remote from the intellectual life of
the twentieth century as an Indian medicine-man
making incantation in the primeval forest ten thou-^i
sand years ago."
As Ernest talked he seemed in a fine passion; his
face glowed, his eyes snapped and flashed, and his
chin and jaw were eloquent with aggressiveness. But
it was only a way he had. It always aroused people.
His smashing, sledge-hammer manner of attack in-
variably made them forget themselves. And they
were forgetting themselves now. Bishop Morehouse
was leaning forward and listening intently. Exas-
peration and anger were flushing the face of Dr.
Hammerfield. And others were exasperated, too, and
some were smiling in an amused and superior way.
As for myself, I found it most enjoyable. I glanced at
father, and I was afraid he was going to giggle at the
effect of this human bombshell he had been guilty of
launching amongst us.
"Your terms are rather vague," Dr. Hammerfield
interrupted. ''Just precisely what do you mean when
you call us metaphysicians?"
" I call you metaphysicians because you reason meta-
physically," Ernest went on. ''Your method of
reasoning is the opposite to that of science. There is
no validity to your conclusions. You can prove every-
thing and nothing, and no two of you can agree upon
anything. Each of you goes into his own consciousness
Tt
10 THE IRON HEEL
to explain himself and the universe. As well may
you lift yourselves by your own bootstraps as to explain
consciousness by consciousness."
''I do not understand," Bishop Morehouse said.
"It seems to me that all things of the mind are meta-
physical. That most exact and convincing of all
sciences, mathematics, is sheerly metaphysical. Each
and every thought-process of the scientific reasoner is
metaphysical. Surely you will agree with me?"
"As you say, you do not understand," Ernest replied.
"The metaphysician reasons deductively out of his
own subjectivity. The scientist reasons inductively
from the facts of experience. The metaphysician rea-
sons from theory to facts, the scientist reasons from
facts to theory. The metaphysician explains the uni-
verse by himself, the scientist explains himself by the
universe."
"Thank God we are not scientists," Dr. Hammer-
field murmured complacently.
"What are you then?" Ernest demanded.
"Philosophers."
"There you go," Ernest laughed. "You have left
the real and solid earth and are up in the air with a
word for a flying machine. Pray come down to earth
and tell me precisely what you do mean by philosophy."
"Philosophy is — " (Dr. Hammerfield paused and
cleared his throat) — "something that cannot be
defined comprehensively except to such minds and
MY EAGLE 11
temperaments as are philosophical. The narrow scien-
tist with his nose in a test-tube cannot understand
philosophy."
Ernest ignored the thrust. It was always his way
to turn the point back upon an opponent, and he did it
now, with a beaming brotherliness of face and utter-
ance.
"Then you will undoubtedly understand the defini-
tion I shall now make of philosophy. But before I
make it, I shall challenge you to point out error in
it or to remain a silent m.etaphysician. Philosophy^
is merely the widest science of all. Its reasoning
method is the same as that of any particular science
and of all particular sciences. And by that same
method of reasoning, the inductive method, philosophy
fuses all particular sciences into one great science. As
Spencer says, the data of any particular science are
partially unified knowledge. Philosophy unifies the
knowledge that is contributed by all the sciences.
Philosophy is the science of science, the master science,
if you please. How do you like my definition?"
"Very creditable, very creditable," Dr. Hammerfield
muttered lamely.
But Ernest was merciless.
"Remember," he warned, "my definition is fatal
to metaphysics. If you do not now point out a flaw
in m}^ definition, you are disqualified later on from
advancing metaphysical arguments. You must go
12 THE IRON HEEL
through life seeking that flaw and remaining meta-
physically silent until you have found it."
Ernest waited. The silence was painful. Dr. Ham-
merfield was pained. He was also puzzled. Ernest's
sledge-hammer attack disconcerted him. He was not
used to the simple and direct method of controversy.
He looked appealingly around the table, but no one an-
swered for him. I caught father grinning into his napkin.
''There is another way of disqualifying the metaphysi-
cians," Ernest said, when he had rendered Dr. Hammer-
field's discomfiture complete. ''Judge them by their
works. What have they done for mankind beyond the
spinning of airy fancies and the mistaking of their own
shadows for gods ? They have added to the gayety of
mankind, I grant; but what tangible good have they
wrought for mankind ? They philosophized, if you will
pardon my misuse of the word, about the heart as the
seat of the emotions, while the scientists were formu-
lating the circulation of the blood. They declaimed
about famine and pestilence as being scourges of God,
while the scientists were building granaries and drain-
ing cities. They builded gods in their own shapes and
out of their own desires, while the scientists were
building roads and bridges. They were describing the
earth as the centre of the universe, while the scientists
were discovering America and probing space for the
stars and the laws of the stars. In short, the meta-
physicians have done nothing, absolutely nothing, for
MY EAGLE 13
mankind. Step by step, before the advance of science,
they have been driven back. As fast as the ascertained
facts of science have overthrown their subjective expla-
nations of things, they have made new subjective ex-
planations of things, including explanations of the latest
ascertained facts. And this, I doubt not, they will go
on doing to the end of time. Gentlemen, a metaphysi-
cian is a medicine man. The difference between you
and the Eskimo who makes a fur-clad blubber-eating
god is merely a difference of several thousand years of
ascertained facts. That is all."
"Yet the thought of Aristotle ruled Europe for
twelve centuries," Dr. Ballingford announced pom-
pously. ''And Aristotle was a metaphysician."
Dr. Ballingford glanced around the table and was
rewarded by nods and smiles of approval.
''Your illustration is most unfortunate," Ernest
replied. "You refer to a very dark period in human
history. In fact, we call that period the Dark Ages.
A period wherein science was raped by the metaphysi-
cians, wherein physics became a search for the Philoso-
pher's Stone, wherein chemistry became alchemy, and
astronomy became astrology. Sorry the domination
of Aristotle's thought!"
Dr. Ballingford looked pained, then he brightened
up and said :
"Granted this horrible picture you have drawn, yet
you must confess that metaphysics was inherently po-
14 THE IRON HEEL
tent in so far as it drew humanity out of this dark period
and on into the illumination of the succeeding cen-
turies."
'' Metaphysics had nothing to do with it," Ernest
retorted.
''What?" Dr. Hammerfield cried. "It was not the
thinking and the speculation that led to the voyages of
discovery?"
''Ah, my dear sir," Ernest smiled, "I thought you
were disqualified. You have not yet picked out the /
flaw in my definition of philosophy. You are now on an
unsubstantial basis. But it is the way of the meta-
physicians, and I forgive you. No, I repeat, meta-
physics had nothing to do with it. Bread and butter,
silks and jewels, dollars and cents, and, incidentally,
the closing up of the overland trade-routes to India,
were the things that caused the voyages of discovery,/
With the fall of Constantinople, in 1453, the Turks
blocked the way of the caravans to India. The traders
of Europe had to find another route. Here was the
original cause for the voyages of discovery. Columbus
sailed to find a new route to the Indies. It is so stated
in all the history books. Incidentally, new facts were
learned about the nature, size, and form of the earth,
and the Ptolemaic system went glimmering."
Dr. Hammerfield snorted.
"You do not agree with me?" Ernest queried.
"Then wherein am I wrong?"
MY EAGLE 15
"I can only reaffirm my position," Dr. Hammerfield
retorted tartly. ''It is too long a story to enter into
now."
*'No story is too long for the scientist," Ernest said
sweetly. ''That is why the scientist gets to places.
That is why he got to America."
I shall not describe the whole evening, though it is
a joy to me to recall every moment, every detail, of
those first hours of my coming to know Ernest Ever-
hard.
Battle royal raged, and the ministers grew red-faced
and excited, especially at the moments when Ernest
called them romantic philosophers, shadow-projectors,
and similar things. And always he checked them back
to facts. "The fact, man, the irrefragable fact!"
he would proclaim triumphantly, when he had brought
one of them a cropper. He bristled with facts. He
tripped them up with facts, ambuscaded them with
facts, bombarded them with broadsides of facts.
"You seem to worship at the shrine of fact," Dr.
Hammerfield taunted him.
"There is no God but Fact, and Mr. Everhard is its
prophet," Dr. Ballingford paraphrased.
Ernest smilingly acquiesced.
"I'm like the man from Texas," he said. And, on
being solicited, he explained. "You see, the man from
Missouri always says, 'You've got to show me.' But
the man from Texas says, 'You've got to put it in my
16 THE IRON HEEL
hand.' From which it is apparent that he is no meta-
physician,"
Another time, when Ernest had just said that the
metaphysical philosophers could never stand the test of
truth, Dr. Hammerfield suddenly demanded :
'^What is the test of truth, young man? Will you
kindly explain what has so long puzzled wiser heads
than yours?"
"Certainly," Ernest answered. His cocksureness
irritated them. ''The wise heads have puzzled so
sorely over truth because they went up into the air
after it. Had they remained on the solid earth, they
would have found it easily enough — ay, they would
have found that they themselves were precisely testing
truth with every practical act and thought of their
lives."
''The test, the test," Dr. Hammerfield repeated
impatiently. "Never mind the preamble. Give us
that which we have sought so long — the test of truth.
Give it us, and we will be as gods."
There was an impolite and sneering scepticism in his
words and manner that secretly pleased most of them
at the table, though it seemed to bother Bishop More-
house.
"Dr. Jordan ^ has stated it very clearly," Ernest said.
* A noted educator of the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
turies of the Christian Era. He was president of the Stanford Uni-
versity, a private benefaction of the times.
MY EAGLE 17
''His test of truth is: 'Will it work? Will you trust
your life to it?'"
"Pish !" Dr. Hammerfield sneered. "You have not
taken Bishop Berkeley ^ into account. He has never
been answered."
"The noblest metaphysician of them all," Ernest
laughed. "But your example is unfortunate. As
Berkeley himself attested, his metaphysics didn't work."
Dr. Hammerfield was angry, righteously angry. It
was as though he had caught Ernest in a theft or a lie.
"Young man," he trumpeted, "that statement is
on a par with all you have uttered to-night. It is a
base and unwarranted assumption."
"I am quite crushed," Ernest murmured meekly.
"Only I don't know what hit me. You'll have to put
it in my hand, Doctor."
"I will, I will," Dr. Hammerfield spluttered. "How
do you know ? You do not know that Bishop Berkeley
attested that his metaphysics did not work. You have
no proof. Young man, they have always worked."
"I take it as proof that Berkeley's metaphysics did
not work, because — " Ernest paused calmly for a
moment. "Because Berkeley made an invariable prac-
tice of going through doors instead of walls. Because
he trusted his life to solid bread and butter and roast
' An idealistic monist who long puzzled the philosophers of that
time with his denial of the existence of matter, but whose clever ar-
gument was finally demolished when the new empiric facts of science
were philosophically generalized.
c
18 THE IRON HEEL
beef. Because he shaved himself with a razor that
worked when it removed the hair from his face."
'^But those are actual things!" Dr. Hammerfield
cried. ''Metaphysics is of the mind."
''And they work — in the mind?" Ernest queried
softly.
The other nodded.
"And even a multitude of angels can dance on the
point of a needle — in the mind," Ernest went on
reflectively. "And a blubber-eating, fur-clad god
can exist and work — in the mind ; and there are no
proofs to the contrary — in the mind. I suppose.
Doctor, you live in the mind?"
"My mind to me a kingdom is," was the answer.
"That's another way of saying that you live up in the
air. But you come back to earth at meal-time, I am
sure, or when an earthquake happens along. Or, tell
me. Doctor, do you have no apprehension in an earth-
quake that that incorporeal body of yours will be hit
by an immaterial brick?"
Instantly, and quite unconsciously. Dr. Hammer-
field's hand shot up to his head, where a scar disap-
peared under the hair. It happened that Ernest had
blundered on an apposite illustration. Dr. Hammer-
field had been nearly killed in the Great Earthquake ^
by a falling chimney. Everybody broke out into roars
of laughter.
^ The Great Earthquake of 1906 a.d. that destroyed San Francisco.
MY EAGLE 19
''Well?" Ernest asked, when the merriment had
subsided. ''Proofs to the contrary?"
And in the silence he asked again, "Well?" Then
he added, "Still well, but not so well, that argument
of yours." _
But Dr. Hammerfield was temporarily crushed, and
the battle raged on in new directions. On point after
point, Ernest challenged the ministers. When they
affirmed that they knew the working class, he told
them fundamental truths about the working class that
they did not know, and challenged them for disproofs.
He gave them facts, always facts, checked their excur-
sions into the air, and brought them back to the solid
earth and its facts.
How the scene comes back to me ! I can hear him
now, with that war-note in his voice, flaying them with
his facts, each fact a lash that stung and stung again.
And he was merciless. He took no quarter,^ and gave
none. I can never forget the flaying he gave them at
the end :
"You have repeatedly confessed to-night, by direct
avowal or ignorant statement, that you do not know
the working class. But you are not to be blamed for
this. How can you know anything about the working
class? You do not live in the same locality with the
' This figure arises from the customs of the times. When, among
men fighting to the death in their wild-animal way, a beaten man threw
do-ffTi his weapons, it was at the option of the victor to slay him or
spare him.
20 THE IRON HEEL
working class. You herd with the capitahst class in
another locality. And why not? It is the capitalist
class that pays you, that feeds you, that puts the very
clothes on your backs that you are wearing here to-
night. And in return you preach to your employers
the brands of metaphysics that are especially acceptable
to them; and the especially acceptable brands are
acceptable because they do not menace the established
order of society."
Here there was a stir of dissent around the table.
''Oh, I am not challenging your sincerity," Ernest
continued. ''You are sincere. You preach what you
believe. There lies your strength and your value —
to the capitalist class. But should you change your
belief to something that menaces the established order,
3^our preaching would be unacceptable to your em-
ployers, and you would be discharged. Every little
while some one or another of you is so discharged.^
Ami not right?"
This time there was no dissent. They sat dumbly
acquiescent, with the exception of Dr. Hammerfield,
who said :
"It is when their thinking is wrong that they are
asked to resign."
"Which is another way of saying when their think-
^ During this period there were many ministers cast out of the
church for preaching unacceptable doctrine. Especially were they
cast out when their preaching became tainted with sociaUsm.
MY EAGLE 21
ing is unacceptable/' Ernest answered, and then went
on. "So I say to you, go ahead and preach and earn
your pay, but for goodness' sake leave the working class
alone. You belong in the enemy's camp. You have
nothing in common with the working class. Your
hands are soft with the work others have performed
for you. Your stomachs are round with the plenitude
of eating." (Here Dr. Ballingford winced, and every
eye glanced at his prodigious girth. It was said he had
not seen his own feet in years.) "And your minds
are filled with doctrines that are buttresses of the
established order. You are as much mercenaries
(sincere mercenaries, I grant) as were the men of the
Swiss Guard. ^ Be true to your salt and your hire;
guard, with your preaching, the interests of your
employers ; but do not come down to the working class
and serve as false leaders. You cannot honestly be in
the two camps at once. The working class has done
without you. Believe me, the working class will con-
tinue to do without you. And, furthermore, the work-
ing class can do better without you than with you."
^ The hired foreign palace guards of Louis XVI., a king of France
that was beheaded by his people.
CHAPTER II
CHALLENGES
After the guests had gone, father threw himself
into a chair and gave vent to roars of Gargantuan
laughter. Not since the death of my mother had I
known him to hiugh so heartily.
''I'll wager Dr. Hammerficld was never up against
anything like it in his life," he laughed. ''' The cour-
tesies of ecclesiastical controversy ! ' Did you notice
how he began like a lamb — Everhard, I mean, and
how quickly he became a roaring lion? He has a
splendidly disciplined mind. He would have made a
good scientist if his energies had been directed that
way."
I need scarcely say that I was deeply interested in
Ernest Everhard. It was not alone what he had said
and how he had said it, but it was the man himself. I
had never met a man like him. I suppose that was
why, in spite of my twenty-four years, I had not
married. I liked him ; I had to confess it to myself.
And my like for him was founded on things beyond
intellect and argument. Regardless of his bulging
22
CHALLENGES 23
muscles and prizo-fightcr's throat, ho impressed me as
an ingenuous boy. I felt that under the ^mo of an
intellectual swashbuckler was a delicate and sensitive
spirit. I sensed this, in ways 1 knew not, suvfi that
they were my wpm/iAlaiutoitions.
There was something in tliat clarion-call of his that
went to my heart. It still rang in my ears, and I felt
that I should like to hear it again — and to see again
that glint of laughter in his eyes that belied tlie im-
passioned seriousness of his face. And ttiere were
further reaches of vague and indeterminate feelings
that stirred in me. I almost loved him then, though
I am confident, had I never seen him again, that the
vague feelings would have passed away and that I
should easily have forgotten him.
But I was not destined never to see him again. My
father's new-born interest in sociology and the dinner
parties he gave would not permit. Father was not a
sociologist. His marriage with my mother had been
very happy, and in the researches of his own science,
physics, he had been very happy. But when mother
died, his own work could not fill the emptiness. At first,
in a mild way, he had daljbled in philosophy; then,
becoming interested, he had drifted on into economics
and sociology. He had a strong sense of justice, and
he soon became fired with a passion to redress wrong.
It was with gratitude that I hailed these signs of a new
interest in life, though I little dreamed what the out-
24 THE IRON HEEL
come would be. With the enthusiasm of a boy lie
plunged excitedly into these new pursuits, regardless
of whither they led him.
He had been used always to the laboratory, and so
it was that he turned the dining room into a socio-
logical laboratory. Here came to dinner all sorts and
conditions of men, — scientists, politicians, bankers,
merchants, professors, labor leaders, socialists, and
anarchists. He stirred them to discussion, and ana-
lyzed their thoughts on life and society.
He had met Ernest shortly prior to the '^ preacher's
night." And after the guests were gone, I learned how
he had met him, passing down a street at night and
stopping to listen to a man on a soap-box who was
addressing a crowd of workingmen. The man on the
box was Ernest. Not that he was a mere soap-box
orator. He stood high in the councils of the socialist
party, was one of the leaders, and was the acknowledged
leader in the philosophy of socialism. But he had a
certain clear way of stating the abstruse in simple
language, was a born expositor and teacher, and was
not above the soap-box as a means of interpreting
economics to the workingmen.
My father stopped to listen, became interested,
effected a meeting, and, after quite an acquaintance,
invited him to the ministers' dinner. It was after the
dinner that father told me what little he knew about
him. He had been born in the working class, though
CHALLENGES 25
he was a descendant of the old hne of Everhards that
for over two hundred years had hved in America.*
At ten years of age he had gone to work in the mills,
and later he served his apprenticeship and became a
horseshoer. He was self-educated, had taught him-
self German and French, and at that time was earning
a meagre living by translating scientific and philosophi-
cal works for a struggling socialist publishing house in
Chicago. Also, his earnings were added to by the
royalties from the small sales of his own economic and
philosophic works.
This much I learned of him before I went to bed, and
I lay long awake, listening in memory to the sound of
his voice. I grew frightened at my thoughts. He was
so unlike the men of my own class, so alien and so
strong. His masterfulness delighted me and terrified
me, for my fancies wantonly roved until I found my-
self considering him as a lover, as a husband. I had
alwa3^s heard that the strength of men was an irresist-
ible attraction to women ; but he was too strong. "No !
no!" I cried out. "It is impossible, absurd!" And
on the morrow I awoke to find in myself a longing to
see him again. I wanted to see him mastering men in
discussion, the war-note in his voice ; to see him, in
all his certitude and strength, shattering their com-
placency, shaking them out of their ruts of thinking.
'■ The distinction between being native born and foreign born was
sharp and invidious in those days.
26 THE IRON HEEL
What if he did swashbuckle ? To use his own phrase,
'4t worked," it produced effects. And, besides, his
swashbuckUng was a fine thing to see. It stirred one
hke the onset of battle.
Several days passed during which I read Ernest's
books, borrowed from my father. His written word
was as his spoken word, clear and convincing. It was
its absolute simplicity that con\'inced even while one
continued to doubt. He had the gift of lucidity. He
was the perfect expositor. Yet, in spite of his style,
there was much that I did not like. He laid too great\
stress on what he called the class struggle, the antago-
nism between labor and capital, the conflict of interest^
Father reported with glee Dr. Hammerfield's judg-
ment of Ernest, which was to the effect that he was
''an insolent young puppy, made bumptious by a Uttle
and very inadequate learning." Also, Dr. Hammer-
field declined to meet Ernest again.
But Bishop Morehouse turned out to have become
interested in Ernest, and was anxious for another
meeting. ''A strong young man," he said; ''and
very much alive, very much alive. But he is too sure,
too sure."
Ernest came one afternoon with father. The Bishop
had already arrived, and we were having tea on the
veranda. Ernest's continued presence in Berkeley,
by the way, was accounted for by the fact that he was
taking special courses in biology at the university, and
CHALLENGES 27
also that he was hard at work on a new book entitled
"Pliilosophy and Revolution."^
The veranda seemed suddenly to have become small
when Ernest arrived. Not that he was so very large
— he stood only five feet nine inches ; but that he
seemed to radiate an atmosphere of largeness. As he
stopped to meet me, he betrayed a certain slight awk-
wardness that was strangely at variance with his bold-
looking eyes and his firm, sure hand that clasped for a
moment in greeting. And in that moment his eyes
were just as steady and sure. There seemed a question
in them this time, and as before he looked at me over
long.
'^I have been reading your 'Working-class Philoso-
phy,'" I said, and his eyes lighted in a pleased way.
''Of course," he answered, ''you took into considera-
tion the audience to which it was addressed."
"I did, and it is because I did that I have a quarrel
with you," I challenged.
"I, too, have a qua "^ "el with you, Mr. Everhard,"
Bishop Morehouse said.
Ernest shrugged his shoulders whimsically and ac-
cepted a cup of tea.
The Bishop bowed and gave me precedence.
"You foment class hatred," I said. "I consider it
^ This book continued to be secretly printed throughout the three
centuries of the Iron Heel. There are several copies of various editions
in the National Library of Ardis.
28 THE IRON HEEL
wrong and criminal to appeal to all that is narrow and
brutal in the working class. Class hatred is anti-social,
and, it seems to me, anti-socialistic."
''Not guilty," he answered. ''Class hatred is neither
in the text nor in the spirit of anything I have ever
written."
"Oh!" I cried reproachfully, and reached for his
book and opened it.
He sipped his tea and smiled at me while I ran over
the pages.
"Page one hundred and thirty-two," I read aloud:
'The class struggle, therefore, presents itself in the
present stage of social development between the wage-
paying and the wage-paid classes.'"
I looked at him triumphantly.
"No mention there of class hatred," he smiled back.
"But," I answered, "you say 'class struggle.'"
"A different thing from class hatred," he replied.
"And, believe me, we foment no hatred. We say that
the class struggle is a law of social development. We
are not responsible for it. We do not make the class
struggle. We merely explain it, as Newton explained
gravitation. We explain the nature of the conflict
of interest that produces the class struggle."
"But there should be no conflict of interest!" I
cried.
"I agree with you heartily," he answered. "That
is what we socialists are trying to bring about^ — the
CHALLENGES 29
abolition of the conflict of interest. Pardon me. Let
me read an extract." He took his book and turned
back several pages. "Page one hundred and twenty-
six : 'The cycle of class struggles which began with the
dissolution of rude, tribal communism and the rise of
private property will end with the passing of private
property in the means of social existence.' "
''But I disagree with you/' the Bishop interposed,
his pale, ascetic face betraying by a faint glow the
intensity of his feelings. "Your premise is wrong.
There is no such thing as a conflict of interest be-
tween labor and capital — or, rather, there ought not
to be."
"Thank you," Ernest said gravely. "By that last
statement you have given me back my premise."
"But why should there be a conflict?" the Bishop
demanded warmly.
Ernest shrugged his shoulders. "Because we are
so made, I guess."
"But we are not so made !" cried the other.
"Are you discussing the ideal man?" Ernest asked,
" — unselfish and godlike, and so few in numbers as to
be practically non-existent, or are you discussing the
common and ordinary average man?"
"The common and ordinary man," was the answer.
"Who is weak and fallible, prone to error?"
Bishop Morehouse nodded.
"And petty and selfish?"
30 THE IRON HEEL
Again he nodded.
''Watch out !" Ernest warned. ''I said 'selfish.' "
"The average man is selfish/' the Bishop affirmed
valiantly.
"Wants all he can get?"
"Wants all he can get — true but deplorable."
"Then I've got you." Ernest's jaw snapped like a
trap. "Let me show you. Here is a man who works
on the street railways."
"He couldn't w^ork if it weren't for capital," the
Bishop interrupted.
"True, and you will grant that capital would perish
if there were no labor to earn the dividends."
The Bishop was silent.
"Won't you?" Ernest insisted.
The Bishop nodded.
"Then our statements cancel each other," Ernest
said in a matter-of-fact tone, "and we are where we
were. Now to begin again. The workingmen on the
street railway furnish the labor. The stockholders
furnish the capital. By the joint effort of the working-
men and the capital, money is earned.^ They divide
between them this money that is earned. Capital's
share is called 'dividends.' Labor's share is called
\ 'wages.'"
1 In those days, groups of predatory individuals controlled all the
means of transportation, and for the use of same levied toll upon the
public.
CHALLENGES 31
''Very good/' the Bishop interposed. "And there
is no reason that the division should not be amicable."
''You have already forgotten what we had agreed
upon," Ernest replied. "We agreed that the average
man is selfish. He is the man that is. You have gone
up in the air and are arranging a division between the
kind of men that ought to be but are not. But to
return to the earth, the workingman, being selfish,
wants all he can get in the division. The capitalist,
being selfish, wants all he can get in the division.
When there is only so much of the same thing, and when
twolmen^waifr^l tliey^an get of the same thing, there
is a conflict of interest. This is the conflict of interest
between labor and capital. And it is an irreconcilable
conflict. As long as workingmen and capitalists exist,
they will continue to quarrel over the division. If you
v/ere in San Francisco this afternoon, you'd have to,
walk. There isn't a street car running."
"Another strike?" ^ the Bishop queried with alarm.
"Yes, they're quarrelling over the division of the
earnings of the street railways."
Bishop Morehouse became excited.
"It is wrong !" he cried. "It is so short-sighted on
^ These quarrels were very common in those h-rational and anarchic
times. Sometimes the laborers refused to work. Sometimes the
capitahsts refused to let the laborers work. In the violence and tur-
bulence of such disagreements much property was destroyed and
many lives lost. All this is inconceivable to us — as inconceivable
as another custom of that time, namely, the habit the men of the
lower classes had of breaking the furniture when they quarrelled with
their wives.
32 THE IRON HEEL
the part of the workingmen. How can they hope to
keep our sympathy-^;:^ "
''When we are compelled to walk/' Ernest said slyly.
But Bishop Morehouse ignored him and went on :
''Their outlook is too narrow. Men should be men,
not brutes. There will be violence and murder now,
and sorrowing widows and orphans. Capital and
labor should be friends. They should work hand in
hand and to their mutual benefit."
• "Ah, now you are up in the air again," Ernest re-
marked dryly. "Come back to earth. Remember,
we agreed that the average man is selfish."
"But he ought not to be !" the Bishop cried.
-; "And there I agree with you," was Ernest's rejoinder.
■} "He ought not to be selfish, but he will continue to be
i selfish as long as he lives in a social system that is
I based on pig-ethics."
The Bishop was aghast, and my father chuclded.
"Yes, pig-ethics," Ernest went on remorselessly.
"That is the meaning of the capitalist system. And
that is what your church is standing for, what you are
^preaching for every time you get up in the pulpit.
|Pig-ethics ! There is no other name for it."
f Bishop Morehouse turned appealingly to my father,
I but he laughed and nodded his head.
"I'm afraid Mr. Everhard is right," he said. "Lais-
sez-faire, the let-alone policy of each for himself and
! devil take the hindmost. As Mr. Everhard said the
CHALLENGES 33
other night, the function you churchmen perform is
to maintain the established order of society, and society
is established on that foundation."
"But that is not the teaching of Christ !" cried the
Bishop.
"The Church is not teaching Christ these days,"
Ernest put in quickly. "That is why the workingmen
will have nothing to do with the Church. The Church
condones the frightful brutality and savagery with
which the capitalist class treats the working class."
"The Church does not condone it," the Bishop ob-
jected.
"The Church does not protest against it," Ernest
replied. "And in so far as the Church does not protest,
it condones, for remember the Church is supported by
the capitalist class."
"I had not looked at it in that light," the Bishop said
naively. "You must be wrong. I know that there
is much that is sad and wicked in this world. I know
that the Church has lost the — what you call the pro-
letariat." ^
"You never had the proletariat," Ernest cried.
"The proletariat has grown up outside the Church and
without the Church."
* Proletariat : Derived originally from the Latin proletarii, the name
given in the census of Servius Tullius to those who were of value
to the state only as the rearers of offspring (proles) ; in other words,
they were of no importance either for wealth, or position, or excep-
tional abilitv.
34 THE IRON HEEL
^'I do not follow you," the Bishop said faintly.
''Then let me explain. With the introduction of
;■ machinery and the factory system in the latter part of
I the eighteenth century, the great mass of the working
': people was separated from the land. The old system
of labor was broken down. The working people were
driven from their villages and herded in factory towns.
The mothers and children were put to work at the new
machines. Family life ceased. The conditions were
frightful. It is a tale of blood."
''I know, I know," Bishop Morehouse interrupted
with an agonized expression on his face. ''It was
terrible. But it occurred a century and a half ago."
''And there, a century and a half ago, originated the
modern proletariat," Ernest continued. "And the
Church ignored it. While a slaughter-house was made
of the nation by the capitalists, the Church was dumb.
It did not protest, as to-day it does not protest. As
Austin Lewis ^ says, speaking of that time, those to
whom the command 'Feed my lambs' had been given,
saw those lambs sold into slavery and worked to death
without a protest.^ The Church was dumb, then, and
' Candidate for Governor of California on the Socialist ticket in the
fall election of 1906 Christian Era. An Englishman by birth, a writer
of many books on political economy and philosophy, and one of the
Socialist leaders of the times.
/ - There is no more horrible page in history than the treatment of
the child and women slaves in the English factories in the latter half
of the eighteenth century of the Christian Era. In such industrial
hells arose some of the proudest fortunes of that day.
CHALLENGES 35
before I go on I want you either flatly to agree with me
or flatly to disagree with me. Was the Church dumb
then?"
Bishop Morehouse hesitated. Like Dr. Hammerfield,
he was unused to this fierce 'infighting," as Ernest
called it.
''The history of the eighteenth century is written/'
Ernest prompted. "If the Church was not dumb, it
will be found not dumb in the books."
"I am afraid the Church was dumb," the Bishop
confessed.
"And the Church is dumb to-day."
"There I disagree," said the Bishop.
Ernest paused, looked at him searchingly, and ac-
cepted the challenge.
"All right," he said. "Let us see. In Chicago there
are women who toil all the week for ninety cents.
Has the Church protested?"
"This is news to me," was the answer. "Ninety
cents per week ! It is horrible !"
"Has the Church protested?" Ernest insisted.
"The Church does not know." The Bishop was
struggling hard.
"Yet the command to the Church was, 'Feed my
lambs,'" Ernest sneered. And then, the next mo-
ment, "Pardon my sneer, Bishop. But can you won-
der that we lose patience with you? When have you
protested to your capitalistic congregations at the
36 THE IRON HEEL
working of children in the Southern cotton mills ? ^
Children, six and seven years of age, working every
night at twelve-hour shifts ? They never see the blessed
sunshine. They die like flies. The dividends are paid
' Everhard might have drawn a better illustration from the South-
ern Church's outspoken defence of chattel slavery prior to what is
known as the " War of the Rebellion." Several such illustrations,
culled from the documents of the times, are here appended. In
/1835 A.D., the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church resolved
'that: "slavery is recognized in both the Old and the New Testaments,
iand is not condemned by the authority of God." The Charleston Bap-
* tist Association issued the following, in an address, in 1835 a.d.:
"The right of masters to dispose of the time of their slaves has
ween distinctly recognized by the Creator of all things, who is surely
Scf liberty to vest the right of property over any object whomsoever He
pleases." The Rev. E. D. Simon, Doctor of Divinity and professor
in the Randolph-Macon Methodist College of Virginia, wrote : " Ex-
tracts from Holy Writ unequivocally assert the right of property in
slaves, together with the usual incidents to that right. The right to buy
and sell is clearly stated. Upon the whole, then, whether we consult the
Jewish policy instituted by God himself, or the uniform opinion and
practice of mankind in all ages, or the injunctions of the New Testa-
ment and the moral law, we are brought to the conclusion that slavery
'is not immoral. Having established the point that the first African
slaves were legally brought into bondage, the right to detain their children
^in bondage follows as an indispensable consequence. Thus we see that
ihe slavery thai exists in America was founded in right."
It is not at aU remarkable that this same note should have been
struck by the Church a generation or so later in relation to the defence
of capitalistic property. In the great museum at Asgard there is a
book entitled "Essays in Apphcation," written by Henry van Dyke.
The book was published in 1905 of the Christian Era. From what
we can make out, Van Dyke must have been a Churchman. The
book is a good example of what Everhard would have called bourgeois
thinking. Note the similarity between the utterance of the Charleston
Baptist Association quoted above, and the following utterance of Van
Dyke seventy years later : " The Bible teaches that God owns the world.
He distributes to every man according to His own good pleasure, con-
formably to general laws"
CHALLENGES 37
out of their blood. And out of the dividends mag-
nificent churches are builded in New England, wherein
your kind preaches pleasant platitudes to the sleek,
full-bellied recipients of those dividends."
'^I did not know," the Bishop murmured faintly.
His face was pale, and he seemed suffering from
nausea.
''Then you have not protested?"
The Bishop shook his head.
"Then the Church is dumb to-day, as it was in the
eighteenth century?"
The Bishop was silent, and for once Ernest forbore
to press the point.
"And do not forget, whenever a churchman does
protest, that he is discharged."
"I hardly think that is fair," was the objection.
"Will you protest?" Ernest demanded.
"Show me evils, such as you mention, in our own com-
munity, and I will protest."
"I'll show you," Ernest said quietly. "I am at your
disposal. I will take you on a journey through hell."
"And I shall protest." The Bishop straightened
himself in his chair, and over his gentle face spread the
harshness of the warrior. "The Church shall not be
dumb!"
"You mil be discharged," was the warning.
"I shall prove the contrary," was the retort. "I
shall prove, if what you say is so, that the Church has
38 THE IRON HEEL
erred through ignorance. And, furthermore, I hold that
whatever is horrible in industrial society is due to the
ignorance of the capitalist class. It will mend all that is
wrong as soon as it receives the message. And this
message it shall be the duty of the Church to deliver."
Ernest laughed. He laughed brutally, and I was
driven to the Bishop's defence.
''Remember," I said, ''you see but one side of the
shield. There is much good in us, though you give us
credit for no good at all. Bishop Morehouse is right.
The industrial wrong, terrible as you say it is, is due
to ignorance. The divisions of society have become
too widely separated."
"The wild Indian is not so brutal and savage as the
capitalist class," he answered; and in that moment I
hated him.
"You do not know us," I answered. "We are not
brutal and savage."
"Prove it," he challenged.
"How can I prove it . . . to you?" I was growing
angry.
He shook his head. "I do not ask you to prove it to
me. I ask you to prove it to yourself."
"I know," I said.
"You know nothing," was his rude reply.
"There, there, children," father said soothingly.
"I don't care — " I began indignantly, but Ernest
interrupted.
CHALLENGES 39
"I understand you have money, or your father has,
which is the same thing — money invested in the Sierra
Mills."
''What has that to do with it?" I cried.
''Nothing much," he began slowly, "except that the
gown you wear is stained with blood. The food you
eat is a bloody stew. The blood of little children and
of strong men is dripping from your very roof-beams.
I can close my eyes, now, and hear it drip, drop, drip,
drop, all about me."
And suiting the action to the words, he closed his
eyes and leaned back in his chair. I burst into tears
of mortification and hurt vanity. I had never been so
brutally treated in my life. Both the Bishop and my
father were embarrassed and perturbed. They tried
to lead the conversation away into easier channels;
but Ernest opened his eyes, looked at me, and waved
them aside. His mouth was stern, and his eyes too ;
and in the latter there was no glint of laughter. What
he was about to say, what terrible castigation he was
going to give me, I never knew ; for at that moment
a man, passing along the sidewalk, stopped and glanced
in at us. He was a large man, poorly dressed, and
on his back was a great load of rattan and bamboo
stands, chairs, and screens. He looked at the house
as if debating whether or not he should come in and
try to sell some of his wares.
"That man's name is Jackson," Ernest said.
40 THE IRON HEEL
"With that strong body of his he should be at work,
and not peddUng," ^ I answered curtly.
''Notice the sleeve of his left arm," Ernest said
gently.
I looked, and saw that the sleeve was empty.
''It was some of the blood from that arm that I
heard dripping from your roof-beams," Ernest said with
continued gentleness. "He lost his arm in the Sierra
Mills, and like a broken-down horse you turned him out
on the highway to die. When I say 'you,' I mean the
superintendent and the officials that you and the other
stockholders pay to manage the mills for you. It was
an accident. It was caused by his trying to save the
company a few dollars. The toothed drum of the picker
caught his arm. He might have let the small flint that
he saw in the teeth go through. It would have smashed
out a double row of spikes. But he reached for the
flint, and his arm was picked and clawed to shreds from
the finger tips to the shoulder. It was at night. The
mills were working overtime. They paid a fat dividend
that quarter. Jackson had been working many hours,
and his muscles had lost their resiliency and snap.
They made his movements a bit slow. That was why
the machine caught him. He had a wife and three
children."
* In that day there were many thousands of these poor merchants
called pedlers. They carried their whole stock in trade from door to
door. It "was a most wasteful expenditure of energy. Distribution
was as confused and irrational as the whole general system of society.
CHALLENGES 41
"And what did the company do for him?" I
asked.
''Nothing. Oh, yes, they did do something. They
successfully fought the damage suit he brought when
he came out of hospital. The company employs very
efficient lawyers, you know."
''You have not told the whole story," I said with
conviction. "Or else you do not know the whole story.
Maybe the man was insolent."
"Insolent! Ha! ha!" His laughter was Meph-
istophelian. " Great God ! Insolent ! And with his
arm chewed off ! Nevertheless he was a meek and
lowly servant, and there is no record of his having been
insolent."
"But the courts," I urged. "The case would not
have been decided against him had there been no more
to the affair than you have mentioned."
"Colonel Ingram is leading counsel for the company.
He is a shrewd lawyer." Ernest looked at me intently
for a moment, then went on. "I'll tell you what you
do. Miss Cunningham. You investigate Jackson's
case."
"I had already determined to," I said coldly.
"All right," he beamed good-naturedly, "and I'll
tell you where to find him. But I tremble for you when
I think of all you are to prove by Jackson's arm."
And so it came about that both the Bishop and I
accepted Ernest's challenges. They went away to-
42 THE IRON HEEL
gether, leaving me smarting with a sense of injustice
that had been done me and my class. The man was a
beast. / I hated him, then, and consoled myself with
the thought that his behavior was what was to be ex-
pected from a man of the working class..
CHAPTER III
Jackson's arm
Little did I dream the fateful part Jackson's arm
was to play in my life. Jackson himself did not impress
me when I hunted him out. I found him in a crazy,
ramshackle ^ house down near the bay on the edge of
the marsh. Pools of stagnant water stood around the
house, their surfaces covered with a green and putrid-
looking scum, while the stench that arose from them
was intolerable.
I found Jackson the meek and lowly man he had been
described. He was making some sort of rattan-work,
and he toiled on stolidly while I talked with him. But
in spite of his meekness and lowliness, I fancied I
caught the first note of a nascent bitterness in him
when he said :
''They might a-given me a job as watchman,^ any-
way."
^ An adjective descriptive of ruined and dilapidated houses in
which great numbers of the working people found shelter in those days.
They invariably paid rent, and, considering the value of such houses,
enormous rent, to the landlords.
^ In those days thievery was incredibly prevalent. Everybody
stole property from everybody else. The lords of society stole le-
gally or else legaUzed their stealing, while the poorer classes stole ille-
43
44 THE IRON HEEL
I got little out of him. He struck me as stupid,
and yet the deftness with which he worked with his
one hand seemed to belie his stupidity. This sug-
gested an idea to me.
''How did you happen to get your arm caught in the
machine?" I asked.
He looked at me in a slow and pondering way, and
shook his head. "I don't know. It just happened."
"Carelessness?" I prompted.
"No," he answered, "I ain't for callin' it that. I
was workin' overtime, an' I guess I was tired out some.
I worked seventeen years in them mills, an' I've took
notice that most of the accidents happens just before
whistle-blow.^ I'm wilhn' to bet that more accidents
happens in the hour before whistle-blow than in all the
rest of the day. A man ain't so quick after workin'
steady for hours. I've seen too many of 'em cut up an'
gouged an' chawed not to know."
"Many of them?" I queried.
"Hundreds an' hundreds, an' children, too."
With the exception of the terrible details, Jackson's
story of his accident was the same as that I had already
gaily. Nothing was safe unless guarded. Enormous numbers of
men were employed as watchmen to protect property. The houses
of the well-to-do were a combination of safe deposit vault and for-
tress. The appropriation of the personal belongings of others by our
owTi children of to-day is looked upon as a rudimentary survival of
the theft-characteristic that in those early times was universal.
' , 1 The laborers were called to work and dismissed by savage,
screaming, nerve-racking steam-whistles.
JACKSON'S ARM 45
heard. When I asked him if he had broken some rule
of working the machinery, he shook his head.
''I chucked off the belt with my right hand," he said,
"an' made a reach for the flint with my left. I didn't
stop to see if the belt was off. I thought my right
hand had done it — only it didn't. I reached quick,
and the belt wasn't all the way off. And then my
arm was chewed off."
"It must have been painful," I said sympathetically.
"The crunchin' of the bones wasn't nice," was his
answer.
His mind was rather hazy concerning the damage
suit. Only one thing was clear to him, and that was
that he had not got any damages. He had a feeling
that the testimony of the foremen and the superin-
tendent had brought about the adverse decision of the
court. Their testimony, as he put it, "wasn't what
it ought to have ben." And to them I resolved to go.
One thing was plain, Jackson's situation was
wretched. His wife was in ill health, and he was un-
able to earn, by his rattan-work and peddling, suffi-
cient food for the family. He was back in his rent, and |
the oldest boy, a lad of eleven, had started to work in*
the mills. |
"They might a-given me that watchman's job,"
were his last words as I went away.
By the time I had seen the lawyer who had handled
Jackson's case, and the two foremen and the superin-
I
46 THE IRON HEEL
tendent at the mills who had testified, I began to feel
that there was something after all in Ernest's contention.
He was a weak and inefficient-looking man, the law-
yer, and at sight of him I did not wonder that Jackson's
case had been lost. My first thought was that it had
served Jackson right for getting such a lawyer. But the
next moment two of Ernest's statements came flashing
into my consciousness: '*The company employs very
efficient lawyers" and '^Colonel Ingram is a shrewd
lavv'yer." I did some rapid thinking. It dawned
upon me that of course the company could afford finer
legal talent than could a workingman hke Jackson.
But this was merely a minor detail. There was some
very good reason, I was sure, why Jackson's case had
gone against him.
"Why did you lose the case?" I asked.
The lawyer was perplexed and worried for a moment,
and I found it in my heart to pity the wretched little
creature. Then he began to whine. I do believe his
whine was congenital. He was a man beaten at birth.
He whined about the testimony. The witnesses had
given only the evidence that helped the other side.
Not one word could he get out of them that would have
helped Jackson. They knew which side their bread
was buttered on. Jackson was a fool. He had been
brow-beaten and confused by Colonel Ingram. Colonel
Ingram was brilHant at cross-examination. He had
made Jackson answer damaging questions.
JACKSON'S ARM 47
"How could his answers be damaging if he had the
right on his side?" I demanded.
* ^ What's right got to do with it ? " he demanded back.
"You see all those books." He moved his hand over
the array of volumes on the walls of his tiny office.
"All my reading and studying of them has taught me
that law is one thing and right is another thing. Ask ;
any lawyer. You go to Sunday-school to learn what is \
right. But you go to those books to learn . . . law."
"Do you mean to tell me that Jackson had the right
on his side and yet was beaten ? " I queried tentatively.'
"Do you mean to tell me that there is no justice in
Judge Caldwell's court?"
The little lawyer glared at me a moment, and then
the belligerence faded out of his face.
"I hadn't a fair chance/' he began whining again.
"They made a fool out of Jackson and out of me, too.
What chance had I ? Colonel Ingram is a great lawyer.
If he wasn't great, would he have charge of the law
business of the Sierra Mills, of the Erston Land Syndi-
cate, of the Berkeley Consolidated, of the Oakland,,
San Leandro, and Pleasanton Electric? He's a cor-
poration lawyer, and corporation lawyers are not paid
for being fools. ^ What do you think the Sierra Mills
1 The function of the corporation lawyer was to serve, by corrujit ^
methods, the money-grabbing propensities of the corporations. It is •^'''
on record that Theodore Roosevelt, at that time President of the
United States, said in 1905 a.d., in his address at Harvard Commence-
ment : " We all know that, as things actually are, many of the most
48 THE IRON HEEL
alone give him twenty thousand dollars a year for?
Because he's worth twenty thousand dollars a year
to them, that's what for. I'm not worth that much.
If I was, I wouldn't be on the outside, starving and
taking cases like Jackson's. What do you think I'd
have got if I'd won Jackson's case?"
"You'd have robbed him, most probably,"^ I an-
swered.
'^Of course I would," he cried angrily. ''I've got to
Uve, haven't I?"'
''He has a wife and children," I chided.
"So have I a wife and children," he retorted. "And
there's not a soul in this world except myself that cares
whether they starve or not."
His face suddenly softened, and he opened his watch
and showed me a small photograph of a woman and two
little girls pasted inside the case.
"There they are. Look at them. We've had a
hard time, a hard time. I had hoped to send them
away to the country if I'd won Jackson's case. They're
not healthy here, but I can't afford to send them
away."
' influential and most highly remunerated members of the Bar in every
centre of wealth, make it their special task to work out bold and ingenious
schemes by which their wealthy clients, individual or corporate, can evade
the laws which were made to regulate, in the interests of the public, the
I uses of great wealth."
\ ' A typical illustration of the internecine strife that permeated all
' society. Men preyed upon one another Uke ravening wolves. The
j; big wolves ate the little wolves, and in the social pack Jackson was one
^' of the least of the Uttle wolves.
JACKSON'S ARM 49
When I started to leave, he dropped back into his
whine.
"I hadn't the ghost of a chance. Colonel Ingram
and Judge Caldwell are pretty friendly. I'm not saying
that if I'd got the right kind of testimony out of their
witnesses on cross-examination, that friendship would
have decided the case. And yet I must say that Judge
Caldwell did a whole lot to prevent my getting that
veryL testimony. Why, Judge Caldwell and Colonel
Ingram belong to the same lodge and the same club.
They live in the same neighborhood — one I can't
afford. And their wives are always in and out of each
other's houses. They're always having whist parties
and such things back and forth."
"And yet you think Jackson had the right of
it?" I asked, pausing for the moment on the thresh-
old.
"I don't think; I know it," was his answer. ''And
at first I thought he had some show, too. But I
didn't tell my wife. I didn't want to disappoint her.
She had her heart set on a trip to the country hard
enough as it was."
''Why did you not call attention to the fact that
Jackson was trying to save the machinery from being
injured?" I asked Peter Donnelly, one of the foremen
who had testified at the trial.
He pondered a long time before replying. Then he
cast an anxious look about him and said :
50 THE IRON HEEL
''Because I've a good wife an' three of the sweetest
children ye ever laid eyes on, that's why."
''I do not understand/' I said.
"In other words, because it wouldn't a-ben healthy,"
he answered.
"You mean — " I began.
But he interrupted passionately.
"I mean what I said. It's long years I've worked in
the mills. I began as a little lad on the spindles. I
worked up ever since. It's by hard work I got to
my present exalted position. I'm a foreman, if you
please. An' I doubt me if there's a man in the mills
that'd put out a hand to drag me from drownin'. I
used to belong to the union. But I've stayed by the
company through two strikes. They called me 'scab.'
There's not a man among 'em to-day to take a drink
with me if I asked him. D'ye see the scars on me head
where I was struck with flying bricks? There ain't
a child at the spindles but what would curse me name.
Me only friend is the company. It's not me duty, but
me bread an' butter an' the hfe of me children to stand
by the mills. That's why."
"Was Jackson to blame?" I asked.
"He should a-got the damages. He was a good
worker an' never made trouble."
"Then you were not at liberty to tell the whole
truth, as you had sworn to do?"
He shook his head.
JACKSON'S ARM 5^
''The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth?" I said solemnly.
Again his face became impassioned, and he lifted .-
it, not to me, but to heaven.
''I'd let me soul an' body burn in everlastin' hell
for them children of mine," was his answer.
Henry Dallas, the superintendent, was a vulpine-
faced creature who regarded me insolently and refused
to talk. Not a word could I get from him concerning
the trial and his testimony. But with the other fore-
man I had better luck. James Smith was a hard-faced
man, and my heart sank" as I e'^countered him. He,
too, gave me the impression that he was not a free
agent, and as we talked I began to see that he was men-
tally superior to the average of his kind. He agreed
with Peter Donnelly that Jackson should have got
damages, and he went farther and caUed the action
heartless and cold-blooded that had turned the worker
adrift after he had been made helpless by the accident.
Also, he explained that there were many accidents ^
in the mills, and that the company's poHcy was
to fight to the bitter end aU consequent damage
suits.
"It means hundreds of thousands a year to the stock-
holders," he said; and as he spoke I remembered the
last dividend that had been paid my father, and the
pretty gown for me and the books for him that had
been bought out of that dividend. I remembered
52 THE IRON HEEL
Ernest's charge that my gown was stained with blood,
and my flesh began to crawl underneath my garments.
/ "When you testified at the trial, you didn't point out
that Jackson received his accident through trying to/
i save the machinery from damage?" I said. . I
"No, I did not," was the answer, and his mouth set
bitterly. "I testified to the effect that Jackson injured
himself by neglect and carelessness, and that the com-
pany was not in any way to blame or Hable."
"Was it carelessness?" I asked.
"Call it that, or anything you want to call it. The fact
is, a man gets tired after he's been working for hours."
I was becoming interested in the man. He certainly
was of a superior kind.
"You are better educated than most workingmen,"
I said.
"I went through high school," he replied. "I
w^orked my way through doing janitor-work. I wanted
to go through the university. But my father died,
and I came to work in the mills.
"I wanted to become a naturalist," he explained
shyly, as though confessing a weakness. "I love
animals. But I came to work in the mills. When I
was promoted to foreman I got married, then the family
came, and . . . well, I wasn't my own boss any more."
"What do you mean by that?" I asked.
"I was explaining why I testified at the trial the way
I did — why I followed instructions."
JACKSON'S ARM 53
"Whose instructions?"
''Colonel Ingram. He outlined the evidence I was
to give."
''And it lost Jackson's case for him."
He nodded, and the blood began to rise darkly in his
face.
"And Jackson had a wife and two children dependent
on him."
"I know," he said quietly, though his face was grow-
ing darker.
"Tell me," I went on, "was it easy to make yourself
over from what you were, say in high school, to the man
you must have become to do such a thing at the trial?"
The suddenness of his outburst startled and fright-
ened me. He ripped ^ out a savage oath, and clenched
his fist as though about to strike me.
"I beg your pardon," he said the next moment. "No,
it was not easy. And now I guess you can go away.
You've got all you wanted out of me. But let me tell
you this before you go. It won't do you any good to
repeat anything I've said. I'll deny it, and there are
no witnesses. I'll deny every word of it ; and if I
have to, I'll do it under oath on the witness stand."
After my interview with Smith I went to my father's
office in the Chemistry Building and there encountered
* It is interesting to note the virilities of language that were com-
mon speech in that day, as indicative of the life, 'red of claw and fang,'
that was then lived. Reference is here made, of course, not to the
oath of Smith, but to the verb ripped used by Avis Evcrhard.
54 THE IRON HEEL
Ernest. It was quite unexpected, but he met me with
his bold eyes and firm hand-clasp, and with that curi-
ous blend of his of awkwardness and ease. It was as
though our last stormy meeting was forgotten ; but I
was not in the mood to have it forgotten.
'^I have been looking up Jackson's case," I said
abruptly.
He was all interested attention, and waited for me to
go on, though I could see in his eyes the certitude that
my convictions had been shaken.
"He seems to have been badly treated," I confessed.
"I — I — think some of his blood is dripping from our
roof-beams."
"Of course," he answered. "If Jackson and all his
fellows were treated mercifully, the dividends would
not be so large."
"I shall never be able to take pleasure in pretty gowns
again," I added.
I felt humble and contrite, and was aware of a sweet
feeling that Ernest was a sort of father confessor.
Then, as ever after, his strength appealed to me. It
seemed to radiate a promise of peace and protec-
tion.
"Nor ^dll you be able to take pleasure in sackcloth,"
he said gravely. "There are the jute mills, you know,
and the same thing goes on there. It goes on every-
where. Our boasted civilization is based upon blood,
soaked in blood, and neither you nor I nor any of us
JACKSON'S ARM 55
can escape the scarlet stain. The men you talked with
— who were they ? "
I told him all that had taken place.
^'And not one of them was a free agent," he said.
''They were all tied to the merciless industrial machine.
And the pathos of it and the tragedy is that they are
tied by their heart-strings. Their children — always
the young life that it is their instinct to protect. This
instinct is stronger than any ethic they possess. My
father ! He Ued, he stole, he did all sorts of dishon-
orable things to put bread into my mouth and into the
mouths of my brothers and sisters. He was a slave to
the industrial machine, and it stamped his life out,
worked him to death."
''But you," I interjected. "You are surely a free
agent."
"Not wholly," he replied. "I am not tied by my
heart-strings. I am often thankful that I have no
children, and I dearly love children. Yet if I married
I should not dare to have any."
"That surely is bad doctrine," I cried.
"I know it is," he said sadly. "But it is expedient
doctrine. I am a revolutionist, and it is a perilous
vocation."
I laughed incredulously.
"If I tried to enter your father's house at night to
steal his dividends from the Sierra Mills, what would he
do?"
56 THE IRON HEEL
''He sleeps with a revolver on the stand by the bed,"
I answered. "He would most probably shoot you."
''And if I and a few others should lead a million and
a half of men^ into the houses of all the well-to-do, there
would be a great deal of shooting, wouldn't there?"
"Yes, but you are not doing that," I objected.
"It is precisely what I am doing. And we intend to
take, not the mere wealth in the houses, but all the
sources of that wealth, all the mines, and railroads, and
factories, and banks, and stores. That is the revolution.
It is truly perilous. There will be more shooting, I am
mfraid, than even I dream of. But as I was saying, no
' jone to-day is a free agent. \We are all caught up in the
'wheels and cogs of the industrial machined You found
that you were, and that the men you talked with were.
Talk with more of them. Go and see Colonel Ingram.
Look up the reporters that kept Jackson's case out of
the papers, and the editors that run the papers. You
will find them all slaves of the machine."
A little later in our conversation I asked him a sim-
ple little question about the liability of workingmen to
accidents, and received a statistical lecture in return.
"It is all in the books," he said. "The figures have
been gathered, and it has been proved conclusively that
^ This reference is to the socialist vote cast in the United States in
1910. The rise of this vote clearly indicates the swift growth of the
party of revolution. Its voting strength in the United States in 1888
was 2068; in 1902, 127,713; in 1904, 435,040; in 1908, 1,108,427;
and in 1910, 1,688,211,
JACKSON'S ARM 57
accidents rarely occur in the first hours of the morning
work, but that they increase rapidly in the succeeding
hours as the workers grow tired and slower in both
their muscular and mental processes. '"T
''Why, do you know that your father has three times
as many chances for safety of life and limb than has a
workingman? He has. The insurance^ companies
know. They will charge him four dollars and twenty
cents a year on a thousand-dollar accident policy, and ;
for the same policy they will charge a laborer fifteen I
doHars."
''And you?" I asked; and in the moment of asking
I was aware of a solicitude that was something more
than slight,
"Oh, as a revolutionist, I have about eight chances
to the workingman's one of being injured or killed,"
he answered carelessly. "The insurance companie&
charge the highly trained chemists that handle explo-
sives eight times what they charge the workingmen.
I don't think they'd insure me at all. Why did you ask?"
My eyes fluttered, and I could feel the blood warm in
my face. It was not that he had caught me in my
^ In the terrible wolf-struggle of those centuries, no man was per-
manently safe, no matter how much wealth he amassed. Out of fear
for the welfare of their families, men devised the scheme of insurance.
To us, in this intelligent age, such a device is laughably absurd and
primitive. But in that age insurance was a very serious matter. The
amusing part of it is that the funds of the insurance companies were
frequently plundered and wasted by the very officials who were in-
trusted with the management of them.
58 THE IRON HEEL
solicitude, but that I had caught myself, and in his
presence.
Just then my father came in and began making
preparations to depart with me. Ernest returned
some books he had borrowed, and went away first.
But just as he was going, he turned and said :
'^Oh, by the way, while you are ruining your own*,
peace of mind and I am ruining the Bishop's, you'd 1
better look up Mrs. Wickson and Mrs. Pertonwaithe. \
Their husbands, you know, are the two principal stock- '
holders in the Mills. Like all the rest of humanity,
those two women are tied to the machine, but they are
so tied that they sit on top of it." ^
CHAPTER IV
SLA^rES OF THE IMACHINE
The more I thought of Jackson's arm, the more shaken
I was. I was confronted by the concrete. For the
first time I was seeing Hfe. My university life, and
study and culture, had not been real. I had learned
nothing but theories of life and society that looked all
very well on the printed page, but now I had seen life
itself. Jackson's arm was a fact of life. ''The fact,
man, the irrefragable fact !" of Ernest's was ringing in
my consciousness.
It seemed monstrous, impossible, that our whole
society was based upon blood. And yet there was
Jackson. I could not get away from him. Constantly
my thought swung back to him as the compass to the
Pole. He had been monstrously treated. His blood
had not been paid for in order that a larger dividend
might be paid. And I knew a score of happy compla-
cent families that had received those dividends and
by that much had profited by Jackson's blood. If one
man could be so monstrously treated and society move
on its way unheeding, might not many men be so
59
60 THE IRON HEEL
monstrously treated? I remembered Ernest's women
of Chicago who toiled for ninety cents a week, and the
child slaves of the Southern cotton mills he had described.
And I could see their wan white hands, from which the
.blood had been pressed, at work upon the cloth out of
which had been made my gown. And then I thought
of the Sierra Mills and the dividends that had been
paid, and I saw the blood of Jackson upon my gown as
well. Jackson I could not escape. Always my medi-
tations led me back to him.
Down in the depths of me I had a feeling that I stood
on the edge of a precipice. It was as though I were
about to see a new and awful revelation of life. And
not I alone. My whole world was turning over.
There was my father. I could see the effect Ernest
was beginning to have on him. And then there was
the Bishop. When I had last seen him he had looked
a sick man. He was at high nervous tension, and in his
eyes there was unspeakable horror. From the little
I learned I knew that Ernest had been keeping his
promise of taking him through hell. But what scenes
of hell the Bishop's eyes had seen, I knew not, for he
seemed too stunned to speak about them.
Once, the feeling strong upon me that my little world
and all the world was turning over, I thought of Ernest
as the cause of it; and also I thought, "We were so
happy and peaceful before he came!" And the next
moment I was aware that the thought was a treason
SLAVES OF THE MACHINE 61
against truth, and Ernest rose before me transfigured,
the apostle of truth, with shining brows and the fear-
lessness of one of God's own angels, battling for the
truth and the right, and battling for the succor of the
poor and lonely and oppressed. And then there arose
before me another figure, the Christ ! He, too, had
taken the part of the lowly and oppressed, and against
all the established power of priest and pharisee. And
I remembered his end upon the cross, and my heart
contracted wdth a pang as I thought of Ernest. Was
he, too, destined for a cross ? — he, with his clarion call
and war-noted voice, and all the fine man's vigor of him !
And in that m^oment I knew that I loved him, and
that I was melting with desire to comfort him. I
thought of his life. A sordid, harsh, and meagre life
it must have been. And I thought of his father, who
had lied and stolen for him and been worked to death.
And he himself had gone into the mills when he was ten !
All my heart seemed bursting with desire to fold my
arms around him, and to rest his head on my breast —
his head that must be weary with so many thoughts ;
and to give him rest — just rest — and easement and
forgetfulness for a tender space.
I met Colonel Ingram at a church reception. Him I \
knew w^ell and had known well for many years. I
trapped him behind large palms and rubber plants,
though he did not know he was trapped. He met me
with the conventional gayety and gallantry. He was
62 THE IRON HEEL
ever a graceful man, diplomatic, tactful, and con-
siderate. And as for appearance, he was the most
distinguished-looking man in our society. Beside
him even the venerable head of the university looked
tawdry and small.
And yet I found Colonel Ingram situated the same as
the unlettered mechanics. He was not a free agent.
He, too, was bound upon the wheel. I shall never forget
the change in him when I mentioned Jackson's case.
His smiling good-nature vanished like a ghost. A
sudden, frightful expression distorted his well-bred
face. I felt the same alarm that I had felt when
James Smith broke out. But Colonel Ingram did not
curse. That was the slight difference that was left
between the workingman and him. He was famed as
a wit, but he had no wit now. And, unconsciously,
this way and that he glanced for avenues of escape.
But he was trapped amid the palms and rubber
trees.
Oh, he was sick of the sound of Jackson's name.
Wh}^ had I brought the matter up ? He did not relish
my joke. It was poor taste on my part, and very
inconsiderate. Did I not know that in his profession
personal feelings did not count ? He left his personal
feelings at home when he went down to the oflS.ce. At
the office he had only professional feelings.
■ — ^^Should Jackson have received damages?" I asked.
*' Certainly," he answered. "That is, personally, I
SLAVES OF THE MACHINE 63
have a feeling that he should. But that has nothing
to do with the legal aspects of the case."
He was getting his scattered wits slightly in hand.
"Tell me, has right anything to do with the law?" I
asked.
''You have used the wrong initial consonant," he
smiled in answer.
''Might?" I queried; and he nodded his head.
"And yet we are supposed to get justice by means of
the law?"
"That is the paradox of it," he countered. "We
do get justice."
"You are speaking professionally now, are you not ? "
I asked.
Colonel Ingram blushed, actually blushed, and again
he looked anxiously about him for a way of escape.
BulJ blocked his path and did not offer to move.
i "Tell me," I said, "when one surrenders his personal
feelings to his professional feelings, may not the action
be defined as a sort of spiritual mayhem?"
I did not get an answer. Colonel Ingram had in-
gloriously bolted, overturning a palm in his flight.
Next I tried the newspapers. I wrote a quiet, re-
strained, dispassionate account of Jackson's case. I
made no charges against the men with whom I had
talked, nor, for that matter, did I even mention them.
I gave the actual facts of the case, the long years Jack-
son had worked in the mills, his effort to save the ma-
64 THE IRON HEEL
chinery from damage and the consequent accident,
and his own present wretched and starving condition.
The three local newspapers rejected my communication,
likewise did the two weeklies.
I got hold of Percy Lay ton. He was a graduate of
the university, had gone in for journalism, and was then
serving his apprenticeship as reporter on the most in-
fluential of the three newspapers. He smiled when I
asked him the reason the newspapers suppressed all
mention of Jackson or his case.
"Editorial policy," he said. ''We have nothing to
do with that. It's up to the editors."
''But wh}^ is it policy?" I asked.
"We're all solid with the corporations," he answered.
"If you paid advertising rates, you couldn't get any
such matter into the papers. A man who tried to
smuggle it in would lose his job. You couldn't get
it in if you paid ten times the regular advertising
rates."
"How about your own policy?" I questioned. "It
would seem your function is to twist truth at the com-
mand of your employers, who, in turn, obey the behests
of the corporations."
"I haven't anything to do with that." He looked
uncomfortable for the moment, then brightened as he
saw his way out. "I, myself, do not write untruthful
things. I keep square all right with my own conscience.
Of course, there's lots that's repugnant in the course of
SLAVES OF THE MACHINE 65
the day's work. But then, you see, that's all part of
the day's work," he wound up boyishly.
''Yet you expect to sit at an editor's desk some day
and conduct a policy."
"I'll be case-hardened by that time," was his reply.
''Since you are not yet case-hardened, tell me what
you think right now about the general editorial policy."
"I don't think," he answered quickly. "One can't
kick over the ropes if he's going to succeed in journalism.
I've learned that much, at any rate."
And he nodded his young head sagely.
"But the right?" I persisted.
"You don't understand the game. Of course it's
all right, because it comes out all right, don't you
see?"
"Delightfully vague," I murmured; but my heart
was aching for the youth of him, and I felt that I must
either scream or burst into tears.
I was beginning to see through the appearances of
the society in which I had always lived, and to find the
frightful realities that were beneath. There seemed
a tacit conspiracy against Jackson, and I was aware of
a thrill of sympathy for the whining lawyer who had
ingloriously fought his case. But this tacit conspiracy
grew large. Not alone was it aimed against Jackson.
It was aimed against every workingman who was
maimed in the mills. And if against every man in
the mills, why not against every man in all the other
66 THE IRON HEEL
mills and factories? In fact, was it not true of all
the industries?
And if this was so, then society was a lie. I shrank
back from my own conclusions. It was too terrible
and awful to be true. But there was Jackson, and
Jackson's arm, and the blood that stained my gown
and dripped from my own roof-beams. And there were
many Jacksons — hundreds of them in the mills alone,
as Jackson himself had said. Jackson I could not escape.
I saw Mr. Wickson and Mr. Pertonwaithe, the two
men who held most of the stock in the Sierra Mills.
But I could not shake them as I had shaken the me-
chanics in their employ. I discovered that they had
an ethic superior to that of the rest of society. It was
w^hat I may call the aristocratic ethic or the master
ethic. ^ They talked in large ways of policy, and they
identified policy and right. And to me they talked
in fatherly w^ays, patronizing my j^outh and inex-
perience. They were the most hopeless of all I had
encountered in my quest. Thej^ believed absolutely
that their conduct was right. There was no question
about it, no discussion. They were convinced that
they were the saviours of society, and that it was they
who made happiness for the many. And they drew
pathetic pictures of what would be the sufferings of
* Before A^ds Everliard was born, John Stuart Mill, in his essay,
On Liberty, wrote: "Wherever there is an ascendant class, a large
portion of the morality emajiates from its class interests and its class
feelings of superiority."
SLAVES OF THE MACHINE 67
the working class were it not for the employment that
they, and they alone, by their wisdom, provided for it.
Fresh from these two masters, I met Ernest and
related my experience. He looked at me with a pleased
expression, and said :
'^ Really, this is fine. You are beginning to dig truth
for yourself. It is your own empirical generalization,
and it is correct. No man in the industrial machine is
a free-will agent, except the large capitalist, and he
isn't, if you'll pardon the Irishism.^ , You see, the mas-
ters are quite sure that they are right in what they are
doing. That is the crowning absurdity of the whole
situation. They are so tied by their human nature
that they can't do a thing unless they think it is right.
They must have a sanction for their acts.
''When they want to do a thing, in business of course,
they must wait till there arises in their brains, some-
how, a religious, or ethical, or scientific, or philosophic,
concept that the thing is right. And then they go
ahead and do it, unwitting that one of the weaknesses
of the human mind is that the wish is parent to the
thought. No matter what they want to do, the sanc-
tion always comes. They are superficial casuists.
They are Jesuitical. They even see their way to doing
wrong that right may come of it. One of the pleasant
and axiomatic fictions they have created is that they
* Verbal contradictions, called hulls, were long an amiable weakness--
of the ancient Irish.
68 THE IRON HEEL
are superior to the rest of mankind in wisdom and
efficiency. Therefrom comes their sanction to manage
the bread and butter of the rest of mankind. They
have even resurrected the theory of the divine right of
kings — commercial kings in their case.^
''The weakness in their position lies in that they
are merel}^ business men. They are not philosophers.
They are not biologists nor sociologists. If they were,
of course all would be well. A business man who was
also a biologist and a sociologist would know, approxi-
mately, the right thing to do for humanity. But, out-
side the realm of business, these men are stupid. They
know only business. They do not know mankind nor
society, and yet they set themselves up as arbiters of
the fates of the hungry millions and all the other mill-
ions thrown in. History, some day, will have an
excruciating laugh at their expense."
I was not surprised when I had my talk out with
]\Irs. Wickson and Mrs. Pertonwaithe. They were
society women.^ Their homes were palaces. They
^ The newspapers, in 1902 of that era, credited the president of the
Anthracite Coal Trust, George F. Baer, with the enunciation of the
following principle : " The rights and interests of the laboring man will
be protected by the Christian men to whom God in His infinite wisdom
has given the property interests of the country."
^ Society is here used in a restricted sense, a common usage of the
times to denote the gilded drones that did no labor, but ordy glutted
themselves at the honey- vats of the workers. Neither the business
men nor the laborers had time or opportunity for society. Society
was the creation of the idle rich who toiled not and who in this way
played.
SLAVES OF THE MACHINE 69
had many homes scattered over the country, in the 1
mountains, on lakes, and by the sea. They were
tended by armies of servants, and their social activi-
ties were bewildering. They patronized the university
and the churches, and the pastors especially bowed
at their knees in meek subservience.^ They were /
powers, these two women, what of the money that was
theirs. The power of subsidization of thought was
theirs to a remarkable degree, as I was soon to learn
under Ernest's tuition.
They aped their husbands, and talked in the same\
large ways about policy, and the duties and responsibili-
ties of the rich. They were swayed by the same ethic
that dominated their husbands — the ethic of their
class ; and they uttered glib phrases that their own ears
did not understand.
Also, they grew irritated when I told them of the
deplorable condition of Jackson's family, and when I
wondered that they had made no voluntary provision
for the man. I was told that they thanked no one for
instructing them in their social duties. When I asked
them flatly to assist Jackson, they as flatly refused.
The astounding thing about it was that they refused
in almost identically the same language, and this in
face of the fact that I interviewed them separately and
that one did not know that I had seen or was going to
' " Bring on your tainted money," was the expressed sentiment of
the Church during this period.
VO THE IRON HEEL
see the other. Their common reply was that they were
glad of the opportunity to make it perfectly plain that
no premium would ever be put on carelessness by them ;
nor would they, by paying for accident, tempt the poor/
to hurt themselves in the machinery/
And they were sincere, these two women. They
were drunk with conviction of the superiority of their
class and of themselves. They had a sanction, in their
own class-ethic, for every act they performed. As I
drove away from Mrs. Pertonwaithe's great house, I
looked back at it, and I remembered Ernest's expres-
sion that they were bound to the machine, but that
they were so bound that they sat on top of it.
^ In the files of the Outlook, a critical weekly of the period, in the
number dated August 18, 1906, is related the circumstance of a work-
ingman losing his arm, the details of which are quite similar to those
of Jackson's case as related by Avis Everhard.
CHAPTER V
THE PHILOMATHS
Ernest was often at the house. Nor was it my
father, merely, nor the controversial dinners, that drew
him there. Even at that time I flattered myself that
I played some part in causing his visits, and it was not
long before I learned the correctness of my surmise.
For never was there such a lover as Ernest Everhard.
His gaze and his hand-clasp grew firmer and steadier,
if that were possible ; and the question that had grown
from the first in his eyes, grew only the more imperative.
My impression of him, the first time I saw him, had
been unfavorable. Then I had found myself attracted
toward him. Next came my repulsion, when he so
savagely attacked my class and me. After that, as I
saw that he had not maligned my class, and that the
harsh and bitter things he said about it were justified,
I had drawn closer to him again. He became my
oracle. For me he tore the sham from the face of
society and gave me glimpses^ of_reality_that were_as
unpleasant as they werejandeniably true.
As I have said, there was never such a lover as he.
No girl could live in a university town till she was
twenty-four and not have love experiences. I had
been made love to by beardless sophomores and gray
71
72 THE IRON HEEL
professors, and by the athletes and the football giants.
But not one of them made love to me as Ernest did.
His arms were around me before I knew. His lips were
on mine before I could protest or resist. Before his
earnestness conventional maiden dignity was ridiculous.
He swept me off my feet by the splendid invincible
rush of him. He did not propose. He put his arms
around me and kissed me and took it for granted that
we should be married. There was no discussion about
it. The only discussion — and that arose afterward —
was when we should be married.
\ It was unprecedented. It was unreal. Yet, in
accordance with Ernest's test of truth, it worked. I
trusted my life to it. And fortunate was the trust.
Yet during those first days of our love, fear of the
future came often to me when I thought of the violence
and impetuosity of his love-making. Yet such fears
were groundless. No woman was ever blessed with a
gentler, tenderer husband. This gentleness and vio-
lence on his part was a curious blend similar to the one
in his carriage of awkwardness and ease. That slight
awkwardness ! He never got over it, and it was de-
licious. His behavior in our drawing-room reminded
me of a careful bull in a china shop.^
* In those days it was still the custom to fill the living rooms with
bric-a-brac. They had not discovered simplicity of li\'ing. Such
rooms were museums, entaiUng endless labor to keep clean. The
dust-demon was the lord of the household. There were a myriad de-
vices for catching dust, and only a few devices for getting rid of it,
THE PHILOMATHS 73
It was at this time that vanished my last doubt of
the completeness o^ my love for him (a subconscious
doubt, at most). It was at the Philomath Club — a
wonderful night of battle, wherein Ernest bearded the
masters in their lair. Now the Philomath Club was
the most select on the Pacific Coast. It was the crea-
tion of Miss Brentwood, an enormously wealthy old
^aid; and it was her husband, and family, and toy.
Its members were the wealthiest in the community,
and the strongest-minded of the wealthy, with, of
course, a sprinkling of scholars to give it intellectual
tone.
The Philomath had no club house. It was not that
kind of a club. Once a month its members gathered
at some one of their private houses to listen to a lecture.
The lecturers were usually, though not always, hired.
If a chemist in New York made a new discovery in say
radium, all his expenses across the continent were paid,
and as well he received a princely fee for his time.
The same with a returning explorer from the polar
regions, or the latest literary or artistic success. No
visitors were allowed, while it was the Philomath's
policy to permit none of its discussions to get into the
papers. Thus great statesmen — and there had been
such occasions — were able fully to speak their minds.
I spread before me a wrinkled letter, written to me
by Ernest twenty years ago, and from it I copy the
following :
74 THE IRON HEEL
''Your father is a member of the Philomath, so you
are able to come. Therefore come next Tuesday night.
I promise you that you will have the time of your life.
In your recent encounters, you failed to shake the
masters. If you come, I'll shake them for you. I'll
make them snarl like wolves. You merely questioned
their morality. When their morality is questioned,
they grow only the more complacent and superior.
But I shall menace their money-bags. That wiU
shake them to the roots of their primitive natures.
If you can come, you will see the cave-man, in evening
dress, snarling and snapping over a bone. I promise
you a great caterwauling and an illuminating insight
into the nature of the beast.
"They've invited me in order to tear me to pieces.
This is the idea of Miss Brentwood. She clumsUy
hinted as much when she invited me. She's given them
that kind of fun before. They delight in getting trust-
ful-souled gentle reformers before them. Miss Brent-
wood thinks I am as mild as a kitten and as good-
natured and stolid as the family cow. I'll not deny that
I helped to give her that impression. She was very
tentative at first, until she divined my harmlessness.
I am to receive a handsome fee — two hundred and
fifty dollars — as befits the man who, though a radical,
once ran for governor. Also, I am to wear evening
dress. This is compulsory. I never was so apparelled
in my life. I suppose I'll have to hire one somewhere.
THE PHILOMATHS 75
But I'd do more than that to get a chance at the
Philomaths."
Of all places, the Club gathered that night at the
Pertonwaithe house. Extra chairs had been brought
into the great drawing-room, and in all there must have
been two hundred Philomaths that sat down to hear
Ernest. They were truly lords of society. I amused
myself with running over in my mind the sum of the
fortunes represented, and it ran well into the hundreds
of millions. And the possessors were not of the idle
rich. They were men of affairs who took most active
parts in industrial and political life.
We were all seated when Miss Brentwood brought
Ernest in. They moved at once to the head of the
room, from where he was to speak. He was in evening
dress, and, what of his broad shoulders and kingly head,
he looked magnificent. And then there was that faint
and unmistakable touch of awkwardness in his move-
ments. I almost think I could have loved him for
that alone. And as I looked at him I was aware of a
great joy. I felt again the pulse of his palm on mine,
the touch of his lips ; and such pride was mine that
I felt I must rise up and cry out to the assembled
company: ''He is mine! He has held me in his
arms, and I, mere I, have filled that mind of his to
the exclusion of all his multitudinous and kingly
thoughts!"
At the head of the room, Miss Brentwood introduced
76 THE IRON HEEL
him to Colonel Van Gilbert, and I knew that the latter
was to preside. Colonel Van Gilbert was a great cor-
poration lawyer. In addition, he was immensely
wealthy. The smallest fee he would deign to notice
was a hundred thousand dollars. He was a master of
law. The law was a puppet with which he played.
He moulded it like clay, twisted and distorted it like
a Chinese puzzle into any design he chose. In appear-
ance and rhetoric he was old-fashioned, but in imagina-
tion and knowledge and resource he w^as as young as
the latest statute. His first prominence had come
when he broke the Shardwell will.^ His fee for this
one act was five hundred thousand dollars. From
then on he had risen like a rocket. He was often
called the greatest lawyer in the country — corporation
lawyer, of course ; and no classification of the three
greatest lawyers in the United States could have ex-
cluded him.
He arose and began, in a few well-chosen phrases that
* This breaking of wills was a peculiar feature of the period. With
the accumulation of vast fortunes, the problem of disposing of these
fortunes after death was a vexing one to the accumulators. Will-
making and will-breaking became complementary trades, like armor-
making and gun-making. The shrewdest will-making lawyers were
called in to make wills that could not be broken. But these wills
were always broken, and very often by the very lawyers that had
drawn them up. Nevertheless the delusion persisted in the wealthy
class that an absolutely unbreakable will could be cast; and so,
through the generations, clients and lawyers pursued the illusion.
It was a pursuit like unto that of the Universal Solvent of the mediaeval
alchemists.
THE PHILOMATHS 77
carried an undertone of faint irony, to introduce
Ernest, i Colonel Van Gilbert was subtly facetious in
his introduction of the social reformer and member of
the working class, and the audience smiled. It made
me angry, and I glanced at Ernest. The sight of him
made me doubly angry. He did not seem to resent
the delicate slurs. Worse than that, he did not seem
to be aware of them. There he sat, gentle, and stolid,
and somnolent. He really looked stupid. And for a
moment the thought rose in my mind. What if he were
overawed by this imposing array of power and brains ?
Then I smiled. He couldn't fool me. But he fooled
the others, just as he had fooled Miss Brentwood.
She occupied a chair right up to the front, and several
times she turned her head toward one or another of
her confreres and smiled her appreciation of the re-
marks.
Colonel Van Gilbert done, Ernest arose and began
to speak. He began in a low voice, haltingly and
modestly, and with an air of evident embarrassment.
He spoke of his birth in the working class, and of the
sordidness and wretchedness of his environment, where
flesh and spirit were alike starved and tormented. He
described his ambitions and ideals, and his conception
of the paradise wherein lived the people of the upper
classes. As he said :
''Up above me, I knew, were unselfishnesses of the
spirit, clean and noble thinking, keen intellectual living.
78 THE IRON HEEL
I knew all this because I read 'Seaside Library'^
novels, in which, with the exception of the villains and
adventuresses, all men and women thought beautiful
thoughts, spoke a beautiful tongue, and performed glo-
rious deeds. In short, as I accepted the rising of the
sun, I accepted that up above me was all that was fine
and noble and gracious, all that gave decency and dig-
nity to life, all that made life w^orth living and that
remunerated one for his travail and misery."
He went on and traced his life in the mills, the
learning of the horseshoeing trade, and his meeting
with the socialists. Among them, he said, he had
found keen intellects and brilliant wits, ministers of
the Gospel who had been broken because their Chris-
tianity was too wide for any congregation of mammon-
worshippers, and professors who had been broken on
the wheel of university subservience to the ruling class.
The socialists were revolutionists, he said, struggling
to overthrow the irrational society of the present and
out of the material to build the rational society of the
future. Much more he said that would take too long
to write, but I shall never forget how he described the
life among the revolutionists. All halting utterance
vanished. His voice grew strong and confident, and
it glowed as he glowed, and as the thoughts glowed that
poured out from him. He said :
' A curious and amazing literature that served to make the working
class utterly misapprehend the nature of the leisure class.
THE PHILOMATHS 79
''Amongst the revolutionists I found, also, warm
faith in the human, ardent idealism, sweetnesses of
unselfishness, renunciation, and martyrdom — all the
splendid, stinging things of the spirit. Here life was
clean, noble, and alive. I was in touch with great
souls who exalted flesh and spirit over dollars and cents,
and to whom the thin wail of the starved slum child
meant more than all the pomp and circumstance of
commercial expansion and world empire. All about
me were nobleness of purpose and heroism of effort,
and my days and nights were sunshine and starshine,
all fire and dew, with before my eyes, ever burning and
blazing, the Holy Grail, Christ's own Grail, the warm
human, long-suffering and maltreated but to be rescued
and saved at the last."
As before I had seen him transfigured, so now he
stood transfigured before me. His brows were bright
with the divine that was in him, and brighter yet shone
his eyes from the midst of the radiance that seemed
to envelop him as a mantle. But the others did not
see this radiance, and I assumed that it was due to the
tears of joy and love that dimmed my vision. At any
rate, Mr. Wickson, who sat behind me, was unaffected,
for I heard him sneer aloud, '' Utopian."-- ■^^.
^ The people of that age were phrase slaves. The abjectness of
their servitude is incomprehensible to us. There was a magic in
words greater than the conjurer's art. So befuddled and chaotic
were their minds that the utterance of a single word could negative
the generalizations of a lifetime of serious research and thought. Such
80 THE IROX HEEL
Ernest went on to his rise in society, till at last he
came in touch with members of the upper classes, and
rubbed shoulders with the men who sat in the high
places. Then came his disillusionment, and this dis-
illusionment he described in terms that did not flatter
his audience. LHe was surprised at the commonness
of the clay. Life proved not to be fine and gracious.
He was appalled by the selfishness he encountered,
and what had surprised him even more than that was
the absence of intellectual lifeT^ Fresh from his revo-
lutionists, he was shocked by the intellectual stupidity
of the master class. And then, in spite of their magnifi-
cent churches and well-paid preachers, he had found
the masters, men and women, grossly material. It was
true that they prattled sweet little ideals and dear little
moralities, but in spite of their prattle the dominant
key of the life they lived was materialistic. And they
were without real morality — for instance, that which
Christ had preached but which was no longer preached.
''I met men," he said, ^'who invoked the name of
the Prince of Peace in their diatribes against war, and
who put rifles in the hands of Pinkertons * with which
a word was the adjective Utopian. The mere utterance of it could
damn any scheme, no matter how sanely conceived, of economic
amelioration or regeneration. Vast populations grew frenzied over
such phrases as "an honest dollar" and "a full dinner pail." The
coinage of such phrases was considered strokes of genius.
* Originally, they were private detectives; but they quickly be-
came hired fighting men of the capitalists, and ultimately developed
into the Mercenaries of the Oligarchy.
THE PHILOMATHS 81
to shoot down strikers in their own factories. I met
men incoherent with indignation at the brutality of
prize-fighting, and who, at the same time, were parties
to the adulteration of food that killed each year more
babes than even red-handed Herod had killed.
''This delicate, aristocratic-featured gentleman was
a dummy director and a tool of corporations that se-
cretly robbed widows and orphans. This gentleman,
who collected fine editions and was a patron of litera-
ture, paid blackmail to a heavy-jowled, black-browed
boss of a municipal machine. This editor, who pub-
lished patent medicine advertisements, called me a
scoundrelly demagogue because I dared him to print
in his paper the truth about patent medicines.^ This
man, talking soberly and earnestly about the beauties
of idealism and the goodness of God, had just betrayed
his comrades in a business deal. [This man, a pillar of
the church and heavy contributor to foreign missions,
worked his shop girls ten hours a day on a starvation
wage and thereby directly encouraged prostitutioni
This man, who endowed chairs in universities and
erected magnificent chapels, perjured himself in courts
of law over dollars and cents. This railroad magnate
broke his word as a citizen, as a gentleman, and as a
Christian, when he granted a secret rebate, and he
* Patent medicines were patent lies, but, like the charms and indul-
gences of the Middle Ages, they deceived the people. The only differ-
ence lay in that the patent medicines were more harmful and more
costly.
82 THE IRON HEEL
granted many secret rebates. This senator was
the tool and the slave, the little puppet, of a brutal
uneducated machine boss ; ^ so was this governor and
this supreme court judge; and all three rode on rail-
road passes; and, also, this sleek capitalist owned the
machine, the machine boss, and the railroads that
issued the passes.
/ ''And so it was, instead of in paradise, that I found
myself in the arid desert of commercialism. I found
nothing but stupidity, except for business. I found
none clean, noble, and alive, though I found many who
were alive — with rottenness. What I did find was
monstrous selfishness and heartlessness, and a gross,
gluttonous, practised, and practical materialism."
Much more Ernest told them of themselves and of
his disillusionment. Intellectually they had bored
him; morally and spiritually they had sickened him;
so that he was glad to go back to his revolutionists,
who were clean, noble, and alive, and all that the capital-
ists were not.
"And now," he said, "let me tell you about that
revolution."
But first I must say that his terrible diatribe had
^ Even as late as 1912, a.d., the great mass of the people still per-
sisted in the belief that they ruled the country by virtue of their bal-
lots. In reality, the country was ruled bj"^ what were called political
machines. At first the machine bosses charged the master capitalists
extortionate tolls for legislation ; but in a short time the master capi-
talists found it cheaper to own the political machines themselves and
to hire the machine bosses.
THE PHILOMATHS 83
not touched them. I looked about me at their faces
and saw that they remained complacently superior to
what he had charged. And I remembered what he
had told me : that no indictment of their morality
could shake them. However, I could see that the
boldness of his language had affected Miss Brentwood.
She was looking worried and apprehensive.
Ernest began by describing the army of revolution,
and as he gave the figures of its strength (the votes cast
in the various countries), the assemblage began to
grow restless. Concern showed in their faces, and I
noticed a tightening of lips. At last the gage of
battle had been thrown down. He described the
international organization of the socialists that united
the miUion and a half in the United States with the
twenty-three millions and a half in the rest of the
world.
''Such an army of revolution," he said, 'Hwenty-five
millions strong, is a thing to make rulers and ruling
classes pause and consider. The cry of this army is:
' No quarter ! We want all that you possess. We will
be content with nothing less than all that you possess.
We want in our hands the reins of power and the
destiny of mankind. Here are our hands. They are
strong hands. We are going to take your governments,
your palaces, and all your purpled ease away from you,
and in that day you shall work for your bread even as
the peasant in the field or the starved and runty clerk
84 THE IRON HEEL
in your metropolises. Here are our hands. They are
strong hands ! '"
And as he spoke he extended from his splendid shoul-
ders his two great arms, and the horseshoer's hands were
clutching the air like eagle's talons. He was the spirit
of regnant labor as he stood there, his hands outreach-
ing to rend and crush his audience. I was aware of a
faintly perceptible shrinking on the part of the listeners
before this figure of revolution, concrete, potential, and
menacing. That is, the women shrank, and fear was
in their faces. Not so with the men. They were of
the active rich, and not the idle, and they were fighters.
A low, throaty rumble arose, lingered on the air a
moment, and ceased. It was the forerunner of the
snarl, and I was to hear it many times that night —
ithe token of the brute in man, the earnest of his primi-
tive passions. And they were unconscious that they
had made this sound. It was the growl of the pack,
mouthed by the pack, and mouthed in all unconscious-
ness. And in that moment, as I saw the harshness form^
in their faces and saw the fight-light flashing in theii
eyes, I realized that not easily would they let theij.
lordship of the world be wrested from them.
Ernest proceeded with his attack. He accounted
for the existence of the million and a half of revolu-
tionists in the United States by charging the capitalist
class with having mismanaged society. He sketched
the economic condition of the cave-man and of the
THE PHILOMATHS 85
savage peoples of to-day, pointing out that they pos-
sessed neither tools nor machines, and possessed only
a natural efficiency of one in producing power. Then
he traced the development of machinery and social
organization so that to-day the producing power of
civilized man was a thousand times greater than that
of the savage.
''Five men," he said, "can produce bread for a
thousand. One man can produce cotton cloth for two
hundred and fifty people, woollens for three hundred,
and boots and shoes for a thousand. One would con-
clude from this that under a capable management of
society modern civilized man would be a great deal
better off than the cave-man. But is he ? Let us see.
In the United States to-day there are fifteen million ^
people living in poverty ; and by poverty is meant that
condition in life in which, through lack of food and
adequate shelter, the mere standard of working effi-
ciency cannot be maintained. In the United States
to-day, in spite of all your so-called labor legislation,
there are three millions of child laborers.^ In twelve
years their numbers have been doubled. And in pass-
ing I will ask you managers of society why you did
^ Robert Hunter, in 1906, in a book entitled "Poverty," pointed
out that at that time there were ten milhons in the United States liv-
ing in poverty.
^ In the United States Census of 1900 (the last census the figures
of which were made public), the number of child laborers was placed
at 1,752,187.
86 THE IRON HEEL
not make public the census figures of 1910? And I
will answer for you, that you were afraid. The figures
cf misery would have precipitated the revolution that
even now is gathering.
^^But to return to my indictment. If modern
man's producing power is a thousand times greater
than that of the cave-man, why then, in the United
States to-day, are there fifteen million people who are
not properly sheltered and properly fed? Why then,
in the United States to-day, are there three million
child laborers? It is a true indictment. The capital-
ist class has mismanaged. In face of the facts that
modern man lives more wretchedly than the cave-mani
and that his producing power is a thousand times'
greater than that of the cave-man, no other concliF'
sion is possible than that the capitalist class has mis-
managed, that you have mismanaged, my masters,
that you have criminally and selfishly mismanaged.
And on this count you cannot answer me here to-night,
face to face, any more than can your whole class
answer the million and a half of revolutionists in the
United States. You cannot answer. I challenge
you to answer. And furthermore, I dare to say to you
now that when I have finished you will not answer.
On that point you will be tongue-tied, though you will
talk wordily enough about other things.
''You have failed in your management. You have
made a shambles of civilization. You have been blind
THE PHILOMATHS 87
and greedy. You have risen up (as you to-day rise
up), shamelessly, in our legislative halls, and declared
that profits were impossible without the toil of children
and babes. Don't take my word for it. It is all in the
records against j^ou. You have lulled your conscience
to sleep with prattle of sweet ideals and dear moralities.
You are fat with power and possession, drunken with
success ; and you have no more hope against us than
have the drones, clustered about the honey-vats, when
the worker-bees spring upon them to end their rotund
existence. You have failed in your management of
society, and your management is to be taken away
from you. A million and a half of the men of the work-
ing class say that they are going to get the rest of the
working class to join with them and take the manage-
ment away from you. This is the revolution, my mas-
ters. Stop it if you can."
For an appreciable lapse of time Ernest's voice
continued to ring through the great room. Then arose
the throaty rumble I had heard before, and a dozen
men were on their feet clamoring for recognition from
Colonel Van Gilbert. I noticed Miss Brentwood's
shoulders moving convulsively, and for the moment
I was angry, for I thought that she was laughing at
Ernest. And then I discovered that it was not laugh-
ter, but hysteria. She was appalled by what she had
done in bringing this firebrand before her blessed Philo-
math Club.
88 THE IRON HEEL
Colonel Van Gilbert did not notice the dozen men,
with passion-wrought faces, who strove to get per-
mission from him to speak. His own face was passion-
wrought. He sprang to his feet, waving his arms, and
for a moment could utter only incoherent sounds. Then
speech poured from him. But it was not the speech of
a one-hundred-thousand-dollar lawyer, nor was the
rhetoric old-fashioned.
''Fallacy upon fallacy!" he cried. ''Never in all
my life have I heard so many fallacies uttered in one
short hour. And besides, young man, I must tell you
that you have said nothing new. I learned all that at
college before you were born. Jean Jacques Rousseau
enunciated your socialistic theory nearly two centuries
ago. A return to the soil, forsooth ! Reversion ! Our
biology teaches the absurdity of it. It has been truly
said that a little learning is a dangerous thing, and you
have exemplified it to-night with your madcap theories.
Fallacy upon fallacy ! I was never so nauseated in my
life with overplus of fallacy. That for your immature
generalizations and childish reasonings!"
He snapped his fingers contemptuously and proceeded
to sit down. There were lip-exclamations of approval
on the part of the women, and hoarser notes of con-
firmation came from the men. As for the dozen men
who were clamoring for the floor, half of them began
speaking at once. The confusion and babel was in-
describable. Never had Mrs. Pertonwaithe's spacious
THE PHILOMATHS 89
walls beheld such a spectacle. These, then, were the
cool captains of industry and lords of society, these
snarling, growling savages in evening clothes. Truly
Ernest had shaken them when he stretched out his
hands for their money-bags, his hands that had ap-
peared in their eyes as the hands of the fifteen hundred
thousand revolutionists.
But Ernest never lost his head in a situation. Before
Colonel V^n Gilbert had succeeded in sitting down,
Ernest was on his feet and had sprung forward.
''One at a time!" he roared at them.
The sound arose from his great lungs and dominated
the human tempest. By sheer compulsion of personal-
ity he commanded silence.
''One at a time," he repeated softly. "Let me an-
swer Colonel Van Gilbert. After that the rest of you
can come at me — but one at a time, remember. No
mass-plays here. This is not a football field.
"As for you," he went on, turning toward Colonel
Van Gilbert, "you have replied to nothing I have said.
You have merely made a few excited and dogmatic
assertions about my mental caliber. That may serve
you in your business, but you can't talk to me Hke
that. I am not a workingman, cap in hand, asking
3^ou to increase my wages or to protect me from the
machine at which I work. You cannot be dogmatic
with truth when you deal with me. Save that for
dealing with your wage-slaves. They will not dare
90 THE IRON HEEL
reply to you because you hold their bread and butter,
their lives, in your hands.
''As for this return to nature that you say you
learned at college before I was born, permit me to
point out that on the face of it you cannot have learned
anything since. Socialism has no more to do with the
state of nature than has differential calculus with a
Bible class. I have called your class stupid when out-
side the realm of business. You, sir, have brilliantly
exemplified my statement."
This terrible castigation of her hundred-thousand-
dollar lawyer was too much for Miss Brentwood's
nerves. Her hysteria became violent, and she was
helped, weeping and laughing, out of the room. It was
just as well, for there was worse to follow.
''Don't take my word for it," Ernest continued,
when the interruption had been led away. "Your
own authorities with one unanimous voice will prove
you stupid. Your own hired purveyors of knowledge
will tell you that you are wrong. Go to your meekest
little assistant instructor of sociology and ask him
what is the difference between Rousseau's theory of
the return to nature and the theory of socialism; ask
your greatest orthodox bourgeois political economists
and sociologists; question through the pages of every
text-book written on the subject and stored on the
shelves of your subsidized libraries ; and from one and
all the answer will be that there is nothing congruous
THE PHILOMATHS 91
between the return to nature and socialism. On the
other hand, the unanimous aflSrmative answer will be
that the return to nature and socialism are diametri-
cally opposed to each other. As I say, don't take my
word for it. The record of your stupidity is there in
the books, your own books that you never read. And
so far as your stupidity is concerned, you are but the
exemplar of your class.
"You know law and business. Colonel Van Gilbert.
You know how to serve corporations and increase
dividends by twisting the law. Very good. Stick to
it. You are quite a figure. You are a very good
lawyer, but you are a poor historian, you know noth-
ing of sociology, and your biology is contemporaneous
with PHny."
Here Colonel Van Gilbert writhed in his chair.
There was perfect quiet in the room. Everybody sat
fascinated — paralyzed, I may say. Such fearful
treatment of the great Colonel Van Gilbert was unheard
of, undreamed of, impossible to believe — the great
Colonel Van Gilbert before whom judges trembled
when he arose in court. But Ernest never gave quar-
ter to an enemy.
"This is, of course, no reflection on you," Ernest said.
"Every man to his trade. Only you stick to your
trade, and I'll stick to mine. You have specialized.
When it comes to a knowledge of the law, of how best
to evade the law or make new law for the benefit of
92 THE IRON HEEL
thieving corporations, I am down in the dirt at your
feet. But when it comes to sociology — my trade —
you are down in the dirt at my feet. Remember that.
Remember, also, that your law is the stuff of a day, and
that you are not versatile in the stuff of more than a
day. Therefore your dogmatic assertions and rash
generalizations on things historical and sociological
are not worth the breath you waste on them."
Ernest paused for a moment and regarded him
thoughtfully, noting his face dark and twisted with
anger, his panting chest, his writhing body, and his
slim white hands nervously clenching and unclench-
ing.
''But it seems you have breath to use, and I'll give
you a chance to use it. I indicted your class. Show
me that my indictment is wrong, I pointed out to
you the wretchedness of modern man — three million
child slaves in the United States, without whose labor
profits would not be possible, and fifteen million under-
fed, ill-clothed, and worse-housed people. I pointed
out that modern man's producing power through social
organization and the use of machinery was a thousand
times greater than that of the cave-man. And I stated
that from these two facts no other conclusion was pos-
sible than that the capitalist class had mismanaged.
This was my indictment, and I specifically and at length
challenged you to answer it. Nay, I did more. I
prophesied that you would not answer. It remains
THE PHILOMATHS 93
for your breath to smash my prophecy. You called
my speech fallacy. Show the fallacy, Colonel Van
Gilbert. Answer the indictment that I and my fifteen
hundred thousand comrades have brought against
your class and you."
Colonel Van Gilbert quite forgot that he was presid-
ing, and that in courtesy he should permit the other
clamorers to speak. He was on his feet, flinging his
arms, his rhetoric, and his control to the winds, alter-
nately abusing Ernest for his youth and demagoguery,
and savagely attacking the working class, elaborating
its inefficiency and worthlessness.
''For a lawyer, you are the hardest man to keep to
a point I ever saw," Ernest began his answer to the
tirade. "My youth has nothing to do with what I
have enunciated. Nor has the worthlessness of the
working class. I charged the capitalist class with
having mismanaged society. You have not answered.
You have made no attempt to answer. Why? Is it
because you have no answer? You are the champion
of this whole audience. Every one here, except me,
is hanging on your lips for that answer. They are
hanging on your lips for that answer because they have
no answer themselves. As for me, as I said before, I
know that you not only cannot answer, but that you
will not attempt an answer."
'' This is intolerable !" Colonel Van Gilbert cried out.
''This is insult!"
94 THE IRON HEEL
''That you should not answer is intolerable/' Ernest
replied gravely. "No man can be intellectually in-
sulted. Insult, in its very nature, is emotional. Re-
cover yourself. Give me an intellectual answer to my
intellectual charge that the capitalist class has mis-
managed society."
Colonel Van Gilbert remained silent, a sullen,
superior expression on his face, such as will appear
on the face of a man who will not bandy words with
a rufi&an.
"Do not be downcast," Ernest said. ''Take con-
solation in the fact that no member of your class has
ever yet answered that charge." He turned to the
other men who were anxious to speak. "And now it's
your chance. Fire away, and do not forget that I
here challenge you to give the answer that Colonel
Van Gilbert has failed to give."
It would be impossible for me to write all that was
said in the discussion. I never realized before how
many words could be spoken in three short hours.
At any rate, it was glorious. The more his opponents
grew excited, the more Ernest deliberately excited
them. He had an encyclopaedic command of the field
of knowledge, and by a word or a phrase, by delicate
rapier thrusts, he punctured them. He named the
points of their illogic. This was a false syllogism, that
conclusion had no connection with the premise, while
that next premise was an impostor because it had cun-
THE PHILOMATHS 95
ningly hidden in it the conclusion that was being
attempted to be proved. This was an error, that was
an assumption, and the next was an assertion contrary
to ascertained truth as printed in all the text-books.
And so it went. Sometimes he exchanged the rapier
for the club and went smashing amongst their thoughts
right and left. And always he demanded facts and
refused to discuss theories. And his facts made for
them a Waterloo. When they attacked the working
class, he always retorted, ''The pot calling the kettle
black ; that is no answer to the charge that your own
face is dirty." And to one and all he said: ''Why
have you not answered the charge that your class has
mismanaged? You have talked about other things
and things concerning other things, but you have not
answered. Is it because you have no answer?"
It was at the end of the discussion that Mr. Wickson
spoke. He was the only one that was cool, and Ernest
treated him with a respect he had not accorded the
others.
"No answer is necessary," Mr. Wickson said with
slow deliberation. "I have followed the whole dis-
cussion with amazement and disgust. I am disgusted
with you, gentlemen, members of my class. You
have behaved like foolish little schoolboys, what with
intruding ethics and the thunder of the common poli-
tician into such a discussion. You have been out-
generalled and outclassed. You have been very wordy,
96 THE IRON HEEL
and all you have done is buzz. You have buzzed like
gnats about a bear. Gentlemen, there stands the
bear" (he pointed at Ernest), ^'and 3^our buzzing has
only tickled his ears.
''Believe me, the situation is serious. That bear
reached out his paws to-night to crush us. He has said
there are a million and a half of revolutionists in the
United States. That is a fact. He has said that it
is their intention to take away from us our govern-
ments, our palaces, and all our purpled ease. That,
also, is a fact. A change, a great change, is coming
in society; but, haply, it may not be the change the
bear anticipates. The bear has said that he will crush
us. What if we crush the bear?"
The throat-rumble arose in the great room, and
man nodded to man with indorsement and certitude.
Their faces were set hard. They were fighters, that
was certain.
''But not by buzzing will we crush the bear," Mr.
Wickson went on coldly and dispassionately. "We
will hunt the bear. We will not reply to the bear in
words. Our reply shall be couched in terms of lead.
We are in power. Nobody will deny it. By virtue
of that power we shall remain in power."
■ He turned suddenly upon Ernest. The moment was
dramatic.
"This, then, is our answer. We have no words to
waste on you. When you reach out your vaunted
THE PHILOMATHS 97
strong hands for our palaces and purpled ease, we will
show you what strength is. In roar of shell and shrap-
nel and in whine of machine-guns will our answer be
couched/ We will grind you revolutionists down
under our heel, and we shall walk upon your faces.
The world is ours, we are its lords, and ours it shall
remain. As for the host of labor, it has been in the
dirt since history began, and I read history aright.
And in the dirt it shall remain so long as I and mine
and those that come after us have the power. There
is the word. It is the king of words — Power. Not
God, not Mammon, but Power. Pour it over your
tongue till it tingles with it. Power."
''I am answered," Ernest said quietly. ''It is the
only answer that could be given. Power. It is what
we of the working class preach. We know, and well
we know by bitter experience, that no appeal for the
right, for justice, for humanity, can ever touch you.
Your hearts are hard as your heels with which you
tread upon the faces of the poor. So we have preached
power. By the power of our ballots on election day
will we take your government away from you — "
''What if you do get a majority, a sweeping majority,
on election day?" Mr. Wickson broke in to demand.
* To show the tenor of thought, the following definition is quoted
from "The Cynic's Word Book" (1906 a.d.), written by one Ambrose
Bierce, an avowed and confirmed misanthrope of the period : " Grape-
shot, n. An argument which the future is preparing in answer to the
demands of American Socialism."
H
98 THE IRON HEEL
*' Suppose we refuse to turn the government over
to you after you have captured it at the ballot-
box?"
"That, also, have we considered," Ernest replied.
"And we shall give you an answer in terms of lead.
Power, you have proclaimed the king of words.
Very good. Power it shall be. And in the day that
we sweep to victory at the ballot-box, and you refuse
to turn over to us the government we have constitu-
tionally and peacefully captured, and you demand
what we are going to do about it — in that day,
I say, we shall answer you ; and in roar of shell and
shrapnel and in whine of machine-guns shall our answer
be couched.
"You cannot escape us. It is true that you have
read history aright. It is true that labor has from the
beginning of history been in the dirt. And it is equally
true that so long as you and yours and those that come
after you have power, that labor shall remain in the
dirt. I agree with you. I agree with all that you
have said. Power will be the arbiter, as it always has
been the arbiter. It is a struggle of classes. Just as
your class dragged down the old feudal nobility, so
shall it be dragged down by my class, the working
class. If you will read your biology and your sociology
as clearly as you do your history, you will see that this
end I have described is inevitable. It does not matter
whether it is in one year, ten, or a thousand — your class
THE PHILOMATHS 99
shall be dragged down. And it shall be done by power.
We of the labor hosts have conned that word over till
our minds are all a-tingle \\dth it. Power. It is a
kingly word."
And so ended the night with the Philomaths.
CHAPTER VI
ADUMBRATIONS
It was about this time that the warnings of coming
events began to fall about us thick and fast. Ernest
had already questioned father's policy of having
socialists and labor leaders at his house, and of openly
attending socialist meetings; and father had only
laughed at him for his pains. As for myself, I was
learning much from this contact with the working-
class leaders and thinkers. I was seeing the other side
of the shield, I was delighted with the unselfishness
and high idealism I encountered, though I was appalled
by the vast philosophic and scientific literature of
socialism that was opened up to me. I was learning
fast, but I learned not fast enough to realize then the
peril of our position.
There were warnings, but I did not heed them. For
instance, Mrs. Pertonwaithe and Mrs. Wickson exer-
cised tremendous social power in the university town,
and from them emanated the sentiment that I was a too-
forward and self-assertive young woman with a mis-
chievous penchant for ofiiciousness and interference
100
ADmiBRATIONS 101
in other persons' affairs. This I thought no more than
natural, considering the part I had played in investi-
gating the case of Jackson's arm. But the effect of
such a sentiment, enunciated by two such powerful
social arbiters, I underestimated.
True, I noticed a certain aloofness on the part of
my general friends, but this I ascribed to the dis-
approval that was prevalent in my circles of my in-
tended marriage with Ernest. It was not till some
time afterward that Ernest pointed out to me clearly
that this general attitude of my class was something
more than spontaneous, that behind it were the hidden
springs of an organized conduct. '^You have given
shelter to an enemy of your class," he said. ''And
not alone shelter, for you have given your love, your-
self. This is treason to your class. Think not that
you will escape being penalized."
But it was before this that father returned one after-
noon. Ernest was with me, and we could see that
father was angry — philosophically angry. He was
rarely really angry ; but a certain measure of controlled
anger he allowed himself. He called it a tonic. And
we could see that he was tonic-angry when he entered
the room.
''What do you think?" he demanded. "I had
luncheon with Wilcox."
Wilcox was the superannuated president of the
university, whose withered mind was stored with
102 THE IRON HEEL
generalizations that were young in 1870, and which
he had since failed to revise.
"I was invited/' father announced. '^I was sent
for."
He paused, and we waited.
''Oh, it was done very nicely, I'll allow; but I was
reprimanded. I ! And by that old fossil !"
"I'll wager I know what you were reprimanded for,"
Ernest said.
''Not in three guesses," father laughed.
"One guess will do," Ernest retorted. "And it
won't be a guess. It will be a deduction. You were
reprimanded for your private life."
"The very thing!" father cried. "How did you
guess ? "
"I knew it was coming. I warned you before about
it."
"Yes, you did," father meditated. "But I couldn't
believe it. At any rate, it is only so much more clinch-
ing evidence for my book."
"It is nothing to what will come," Ernest went on,
"if you persist in your policy of having these socialists
and radicals of all sorts at 5^our house, myself included."
"Just what old Wilcox said. And of all unwarranted
things ! He said it was in poor taste, utterly profitless,
anyway, and not in harmony with university traditions
and policy. He said much more of the same vague
sort, and I couldn't pin him down to anything specific.
ADUMBRATIONS 103
I made it pretty awkward for him, and he could only
go on repeating himself and telling me how much he
honored me, and all the world honored me, as a scien-
tist. It wasn't an agreeable task for him. I could see
he didn't like it."
''He was not a free agent," Ernest said. ''The
leg-bar ^ is not always worn graciously."
"Yes. I got that much out of him. He said the
university needed ever so much more money this year
than the state was willing to furnish ; and that it must
come from wealthy personages who could not but be
offended by the swerving of the university from its
high ideal of the passionless pursuit of passionless intel-
ligence. When I tried to pin him down to what my
home life had to do with swerving the university from
its high ideal, he offered me a two years' vacation, on
full pay, in Europe, for recreation and research. Of
course I couldn't accept it under the circumstances."
"It would have been far better if you had," Ernest
said gravely.
"It was a bribe," father protested; and Ernest
nodded.
"Also, the beggar said that there was talk, tea-table
gossip and so forth, about my daughter being seen in
public with so notorious a character as you, and that
* Leg-bar — the African slaves were so manacled ; also criminals.
It was not until the coming of the Brotherhood of Man that the leg-
bar passed out of use.
104 THE IRON HEEL
it was not in keeping with university tone and dignity.
Not that he personally objected — oh, no; but that
there was talk and that I would understand."
Ernest considered this announcement for a moment,
and then said, and his face was very grave, withal there
was^ sombre wrath in it :
''There is more behind this than a mere university
ideal. Somebody has put pressure on President
Wilcox.^ ..
''Do you think so?" father asked, and his face
showed that he was interested rather than frightened.
"I wish I could convey to you the conception that
is dimly forming in my own mind," Ernest said.
"Never in the history of the world was society in so
terrific flux as it is right now. The swift changes in
our industrial system are causing equally swift changes
in our religious, political, and social structures. An
unseen and fearful revolution is taking place in the
fibre and structure of society., One can only dimly
feel these things. But they^are in the air, now, to-day.
One can feel the loom of them — things vast, vague,
and terrible. My mind recoils from contemplation of
what they may crystallize into. You heard Wickson
talk the other night. Behind what he said were the
same nameless, formless things that I feel. He spoke
out of a superconscious apprehension of them."
"You mean . . . ?" father began, then paused.
"I mean that there is a shadow of something colossal
ADUMBRATIONS 105
and menacing that even now is beginning to fall across
the land. Call it the shadow of an oligarchy, if you
will ; it is the nearest I dare approximate it. What its
nature may be I refuse to imagine.^ But what I wanted
to say was this : You are in a perilous position — a peril
that my own fear enhances because I am not able even
to measure it. Take my advice and accept the vaca-
tion."
"But it would be cowardly," was the protest.
"Not at all. You are an old man. You have done
your work in the world, and a great work. Leave the
present battle to youth and strength. We young
fellows have our work yet to do. Avis will stand by
my side in what is to come. She will be your repre-
sentative in the battle-front."
"But they can't hurt me," father objected. "Thank
God I am independent. Oh, I assure you, I know the
frightful persecution they can wage on a professor who
is economically dependent on his university. But I
* Though, like Everhard, they did not dream of the nature of it,
there were men, even before his time, who caught glimpses of the
shadow. John C. Calhoun said : " A power has risen up in the govern-
ment greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various
and powerful interests, combined into one 7nass, and held together by the
cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks." And that great hu-
manist, Abraham Lincoln, said, just before his assassination: "/
see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes
me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . Corporations have been
enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-
power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon
the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands
and the Republic is destroyed."
106 THE IRON HEEL
am independent. I have not been a professor for the
sake of my salary. I can get along very comfortably
on my own income, and the salary is all they can take
away from me."
''But you do not realize/' Ernest answered. ''If
all that I fear be so, your private income, your principal
itself, can be taken from you just as easily as your
salary."
Father was silent for a few minutes. He was think-
ing deeply, and I could see the lines of decision forming
in his face. At last he spoke.
''I shall not take the vacation." He paused again.
^I shall go on with my book.^ You may be wrong,
■but whether you are wrong or right, I shall stand by
my guns."
''All right," Ernest said. "You are travelling the
same path that Bishop Morehouse is, and toward a
similar smash-up. You'll both be proletarians before
you're done with it."
The conversation turned upon the Bishop, and we
got Ernest to explain what he had been doing with him.
* This book, " Economics and Education," was published in that
year. Three copies of it are extant; two at Ardis, and one at As-
gard. It dealt, in elaborate detail, mth one factor in the persistence
of the established, namely, the capitalistic bias of the universities
and common schools. It was a logical and crushing indictment of the
whole system of education that developed in the minds of the students
only such ideas as were favorable to the capitalistic regime, to the
exclusion of all ideas that were inimical and subversive. The book
created a furor, and was promptly suppressed by the Oligarchy.
ADUMBRATIONS 107
I ''He is soul-sick from the journey through hell I
have given him. I took him through the homes of a
few of our factory workers. I showed him the human
wrecks cast aside by the industrial machine, and he
Hstened to their life stories. I took him through the
slums of San Francisco, and in drunkenness, prostitu-
tion, and criminality he learned a deeper cause than
innate depravity. He is very sick, and, worse than
that, he has got out of hand. He is too ethical. He
has been too severely touched. And, as usual, he is
unpractical. He is up in the air with all kinds of ethical
delusions and plans for mission work among the cul-
tured. He feels it is his bounden duty to resurrect the
ancient spirit of the Church and to deliver its message
to the masters. He is overwrought. Sooner or later
he is going to break out, and then there's going to be
a smash-up. What form it will take I can't even guess.
He is a pure, exalted soul, but he is so unpractical.
He's beyond me. I can't keep his feet on the earth.
And through the air he is rushing on to his Gethsemane.
And after this his crucifixion. Such high souls are made
for crucifixion."
''And you?" I asked; and beneath my smile was
the seriousness of the anxiety of love.
"Not I," he laughed back. "I may be executed, or
assassinated, but I shall never be crucified. I am
planted too solidly and stolidly upon the earth."
"But why should 3''0U bring about the crucifixion of
108 THE IRON HEEL
the Bishop?" I asked. ''You will not deny that you
are the cause of it."
''Why should I leave one comfortable soul in com-
fort when there are millions in travail and misery?"
he demanded back.
"Then why did you advise father to accept the vaca-
tion?"
"Because I am not a pure, exalted soul," was the
answer. "Because I am solid and stolid and selfish.
Because I love you and, like Ruth of old, thy people are
my people. As for the Bishop, he has no daughter.
Besides, no matter how small the good, nevertheless
his little inadequate wail will be productive of some
good in the revolution, and every little bit counts."
I could not agree with Ernest. I knew well the
noble nature of Bishop Morehouse, and I could not
conceive that his voice raised for righteousness would
be no more than a little inadequate wail. But I did
not yet have the harsh facts of life at my fingers' ends
as Ernest had. He saw clearly the futility of the
Bishop's great soul, as coming events were soon to
show as clearly to me.
It was shortly after this day that Ernest told me, as
a good story, the offer he had received from the govern-
ment, namely, an appointment as United States Com-
missioner of Labor. I was overjoyed. The salary
was comparatively large, and would make safe our
marriage. And then it surely was congenial work for
ADUMBRATIONS 109
Ernest, and, furthermore, my jealous pride in him made
me hail the proffered appointment as a recognition of
his abilities.
Then I noticed the twinkle in his eyes. He was
laughing at me.
"You are not going to ... to decline?" I quavered.
''It is a bribe," he said. ''Behind it is the fine hand
of Wickson, and behind him the hands of greater men
than he. It is an old trick, old as the class struggle is
old — stealing the ..captains from the army of labor.
Poor betrayed labor ! If you but knew how many of
its leaders have been bought out in similar ways in the
past. It is cheaper, so much cheaper, to buy a general
than to fight him and his whole army. There was —
but I'll not call any names. I'm bitter enough over
it as it is. Dear heart, I am a captain of labor. I could
not sell out. If for no other reason, the memory of
my poor old father and the way he was worked to death
would prevent."
The tears were in his eyes, this great, strong hero of
mine. He never could forgive the way his father had
been malformed — the sordid lies and the petty thefts
he had been compelled to, in order to put food in his
children's mouths.
"My father was a good man," Ernest once said to
me. "The soul of him was good, and yet it was twisted,
and maimed, and blunted by the savagery of his life.
He was made into a broken-down beast by his masters,
110 THE IRON HEEL
the arch-beasts. He should be alive to-day, like your
father. He had a strong constitution. But he was
caught in the machine and worked to death — for
profit. Think of it. For profit — his life blood trans-
muted into a wine-supper, or a jewelled gewgaw, or
some similar sense-orgy of the parasitic and idle rich,
his masters, the arch-beasts."
CHAPTER VII
THE bishop's vision
''The Bishop is out of hand/' Ernest wrote me.
''He is clear up in the air. To-night he is going to
begin putting to rights this very miserable world of
ours. He is going to dehver his message. He has
told me so, and I cannot dissuade him. To-night
he is chairman of the I. P. H., and he will embody his
message in his introductory remarks.
"May I bring you to hear him? Of course, he is
foredoomed to futility. It will break your heart —
it will break his; but for you it will be an excellent
object lesson. You know, dear heart, how proud I am
because you love me. And because of that I want you
to know my fullest value, I want to redeem, in your
eyes, some small measure of my unworthiness. And
so it is that my pride desires that you shall know my
thinking is correct and right. My views are harsh;
the futility of so noble a soul as the Bishop will show you
the compulsion for such harshness. So come to-night.
Sad though this night's happening will be, I feel that it
will but draw you more closely to me."
The I. P. H.^ held its convention that night in San
1 There is no clew to the name of the organization for which these
initials stand.
Ill
112 THE IRON HEEL
Francisco.^ This convention had been called to con-
sider public immorahty and the remedy for it. Bishop
Morehouse presided. He was very nervous as he sat
on the platform, and I could see the high tension he was
under. By his side were Bishop Dickinson; H. H.
Jones, the head of the ethical department in the Uni-
versity of California; Mrs. W. W. Hurd, the great
charity organizer; Philip Ward, the equally great
philanthropist; and several lesser luminaries in the
field of morality and charity. Bishop Morehouse arose
and abruptly began :
^^I was in my brougham, driving through the streets.
It was night-time. Now and then I looked through
the carriage windows, and suddenly my eyes seemed to
be opened, and I saw things as they really are. At first
I covered my eyes with my hands to shut out the
awful sight, and then, in the darkness, the question
came to me : What is to be done ? What is to be done ?
A little later the question came to me in another way :
What would the Master do? And with the question
a great light seemed to fill the place, and I saw my duty
sun-clear, as Saul saw his on the way to Damascus.
''I stopped the carriage, got out, and, after a few
minutes' conversation, persuaded two of the public
women to get into the brougham with me. If Jesus
^ It took but a few minutes to cross by ferry from Berkeley to San
Francisco. These, and the other bay cities, practically composed one
community.
THE BISHOP'S VISION 113
was right, then these two unfortunates were my sisters,
and the only hope of their purification was in my
affection and tenderness.
"I hve in one of the lovehest localities of San Fran-
cisco. The house in which I live cost a hundred thou-
sand dollars, and its furnishings, books, and works of
art cost as much more. The house is a mansion.
No, it is a palace, wherein there are many servants. I
never knew what palaces were good for. I had thought
they were to Hve in. But now I know. I took the
two women of the street to my palace, and they are
going to stay with me. I hope to fill every room in my
palace with such sisters as they."
The audience had been growing more and more
restless and unsettled, and the faces of those that sat
on the platform had been betraying greater and greater
dismay and consternation. And at this point Bishop
Dickinson arose, and, with an expression of disgust
on his face, fled from the platform and the hall. But
Bishop Morehouse, oblivious to all, his eyes filled with
his vision, continued :
'^Oh, sisters and brothers, in this act of mine I find
the solution of all my difficulties. I didn't know what
broughams w^ere made for, but now I know. They are
made to carry the weak, the sick, and the aged ; they
are made to show honor to those who have lost the
sense even of shame.
''I did not know what palaces were made for, but
114 THE IRON HEEL
now I have found a use for them. The palaces of the
Church should be hospitals and nurseries for those
who have fallen by the wayside and are perishing."
He made a long pause, plainly overcome by the
thought that was in him, and nervous how best to
express it.
''I am not fit, dear brethren, to tell you anything
about morality. I have Uved in shame and hypocrisies
too long to be able to help others ; but my action with
those women, sisters of mine, shows me that the better
way is easy to find. To those who believe in Jesus and
his gospel there can be no other relation between man
and man than the relation of affection. Love alone is
stronger than sin — stronger than death. I therefore
say to the rich among you that it is their duty to do
what I have done and am doing. Let each one of you
who is prosperous take into his house some thief and
treat him as his brother^ some unfortunate and treat
: her as his sister, and San Francisco will need no police
force and no magistrates; the prisons will be turned
into hospitals, and the criminal will disappear with his
crime.
''We must give ourselves and not our money alone.
We must do as Christ did ; that is the message of the
Church to-day. We have wandered far from the
Master's teaching. We are consumed in our own flesh-
pots. We have put mammon in the place of Christ.
I have here a poem that tells the whole story. I should
THE BISHOP'S VISION 115
like to read it to you. It was written by an erring soul
who yet saw clearly.^ It must not be mistaken for an
attack upon the Catholic Church. It is an attack upon
all churches, upon the pomp and splendor of all churches
that have wandered from the Master's path and hedged
themselves in from his lambs. Here it is:
"The silver trumpets rang across the Dome;
The people knelt upon the ground with awe ;
And borne upon the necks of men I saw,
Like some great God, the Holy Lord of Rome.
"Priest-like, he wore a robe more white than foam,
And, king-like, swathed himself in royal red,
Three crowns of gold rose high upon his head ;
In splendor and in light the Pope passed home.
"My heart stole back across wide wastes of years
To One who wandered by a lonely sea;
And sought in vain for any place of rest:
'Foxes have holes, and every bird its nest,
I, only I, must wander wearily.
And bruise my feet, and drink wine salt with tears.'"
The audience was agitated, but unresponsive. Yet
Bishop Morehouse was not aware of it. He held
steadily on his way.
''And so I say to the rich among you, and to all the
rich, that bitterly you oppress the Master's lambs.
You have hardened your hearts. You have closed your
ears to the voices that are crying in the land — the
* Oscar Wilde, one of the lords of language of the nineteenth cen-
tury of the Christian Era.
116 THE IRON HEEL
voices of pain and sorrow that you will not hear but
that some day will be heard. And so I say — "
But at this point H. H. Jones and Philip Ward, who
had already risen from their chairs, led the Bishop off
the platform, while the audience sat breathless and
shocked.
Ernest laughed harshly and savagely when he had
gained the street. His laughter jarred upon me. My
heart seemed ready to burst with suppressed tears.
''He has delivered his message," Ernest cried. ''The
manhood and the deep-hidden, tender nature of their
Bishop burst out, and his Christian audience, that loved
him, concluded that he was crazy ! Did you see them
leading him so solicitously from the platform? There
must have been laughter in hell at the spectacle."
"Nevertheless, it will make a great impression, what
the Bishop did and said to-night," I said.
"Think so?" Ernest queried mockingly.
"It will make a sensation," I asserted. "Didn't you
see the reporters scribbling like mad while he was
speaking?"
"Not a line of which will appear in to-morrow's
papers."
"I can't believe it," I cried.
"Just wait and see," was the answer. "Not a line,
not a thought that he uttered. The daily press ? The
daily suppressage !"
"But the reporters," I objected. ''I saw them."
THE BISHOP'S VISION 117
"Not a word that he uttered will see print. You
have forgotten the editors. They draw their salaries
for the policy they maintain. Their policy is to print
nothing that is a vital menace to the established. The
Bishop's utterance was a violent assault upon the
established morality. It was heresy. They led him
from the platform to prevent him from uttering more
heresy. The newspapers will purge his heresy in the
oblivion of silence. The press of the United States?
It is a parasitic growth that battens on the capitalist
class. Its function is to serve the established by
moulding public opinion, and right well it serves it. ..
''Let me prophesy. To-morrow's papers will merely
mention that the Bishop is in poor health, that he has
been working too hard, and that he broke down last
night. The next mention, some days hence, vnll be
to the effect that he is suffering from nervous prostra-
tion and has been given a vacation by his grateful flock.
After that, one of two things will happen : either the
Bishop will see the error of his way and return from
his vacation a well man in whose eyes there are no
more visions, or else he will persist in his madness,
and then you may expect to see in the papers, couched
pathetically and tenderly, the announcement of his
insanity. After that he will be left to gibber his
visions to padded walls."
"Now there you go too far !" I cried out.
"In the eyes of society it will truly be insanity," he
118 THE IRON HEEL
replied. ''What honest man, who is not insane, would
take lost women and thieves into his house to dwell
with him sisterly and brotherly? True, Christ died
between two thieves, but that is another story. In-
sanity ? The mental processes of the man with whom
one disagrees, are always wrong. Therefore the mind
of the man is wrong. Where is the line between wrong
mind and insane mind? It is inconceivable that any
sane man can radically disagree with one's most sane
conclusions.
"There is a good example of it in this evening's
paper. Mary McKenna lives south of Market Street.
She is a poor but honest woman. She is also patriotic.
But she has erroneous ideas concerning the American
flag and the protection it is supposed to symbolize.
And here's what happened to her. Her husband had
an accident and was laid up in hospital three months.
In spite of taking in washing, she got behind in her
rent. Yesterday they e\dcted her. But first, she
hoisted an American flag, and from under its folds she
announced that by virtue of its protection they could
not turn her out on to the cold street. What was done ?
She was arrested and arraigned for insanity. To-day
she was examined by the regular insanity experts.
She was found insane. She was consigned to the
Napa Asylum."
''But that is far-fetched," I objected. "Suppose I
should disagree with everybody about the literary style
THE BISHOP'S VISION 119
of a book. They wouldn't send me to an asylum for
that."
''Very true," he replied. ''But suchjiivergence of
opinion would constitute no menace to society. Therein
lies the difference. The divergence of opinion on the
parts of Mary McKenna and the Bishop do menace
society. What if all the poor people should refuse to
pay rent and shelter themselves under the American
flag ? Landlordism would go crumbling. The Bishop's
views are just as perilous to society. Ergo, to the
asylum with him."
But still I refused to believe.
"Wait and see," Ernest said, and I waited.
Next morning I sent out for all the papers. So far
Ernest was right. Not a word that Bishop Morehouse
had uttered was in print. Mention was made in one or
two of the papers that he had been overcome by his
feelings. Yet the platitudes of the speakers that fol-
lowed him were reported at length.
Several days later the brief announcement was made
that he had gone away on a vacation to recover from
the effects of overwork. So far so good, but there had
been no hint of insanity, nor even of nervous collapse.
Little did I dream the terrible road the Bishop was
destined to travel — the Gethsemane and crucifixion
that Ernest had pondered about.
CHAPTER VIII
THE MACHINE BREAKERS
It was just before Ernest ran for Congress, on the
socialist ticket, that father gave what he privately
called his ''Profit and Loss" dinner. Ernest called it
the dinner of the Machine Breakers. In point of fact,
it was merely a dinner for business men — small
business men, of course. I doubt if one of them was
interested in any business the total capitalization of
which exceeded a couple of hundred thousand dollars.
They were truly representative middle-class business
men.
There was Owen, of Silverberg, Owen & Company —
a large grocery firm with several branch stores. We
bought our groceries from them. There were both
partners of the big drug firm of Kowalt & Washburn,
and Mr. Asmunsen, the owner of a large granite quarry
in Contra Costa County. And there were many similar
men, owners or part-owners in small factories, small
businesses and small industries — small capitalists,
in short.
They were shrewd-faced, interesting men, and they
120
THE MACHINE BREAKERS 121
talked with simplicity and clearness. Their unani- |
mous complaint was against the corporations and trusts.
Their creed was, ''Bust the Trusts." All oppression
originated in the trusts, and one and all told the same ;
tale of woe. They advocated government ownership
of such trusts as the railroads and telegraphs, and:
excessive income taxes, graduated with ferocity, to
destroy large accumulations. Likewise they advo-
cated, as a cure for local ills, municipal ownership of
such public utilities as water, gas, telephones, and
street railways.
Especially interesting was Mr. Asmunsen's narrative
of his tribulations as a quarry owner. He confessed
that he never made any profits out of his quarry, and
this, in spite of the enormous volume of business that
had been caused by the destruction of San Francisco
by the big earthquake. For six years the rebuilding
of San Francisco had been going on, and his business
had quadrupled and octupled, and yet he wc..3 no better
off.
"The railroad knows my business just a little bit
better than I do," he said. ''It knows my operating
expenses to a cent, and it knows the terms of my con-
tracts. How it knows these things I can only guess.
It must have spies in my employ, and it must have
access to the parties to all my contracts. For look
you, when I place a big contract, the terms of which
favor me a goodly profit, the freight rate from my
122 THE IRON HEEL
quarry to market is promptly raised. No explanation
is made. The railroad gets my profit. Under such
circumstances I have never succeeded in getting the
railroad to reconsider its raise. On the other hand,
when there have been accidents, increased expenses of
operating, or contracts with less profitable terms, I
have always succeeded in getting the railroad to lower
its rate. What is the result? Large or small, the
railroad always gets my profits."
''What remains to you over and above," Ernest
interrupted to ask, ''would roughly be the equivalent
of your salary as a manager did the railroad own the
quarry."
"The very thing," Mr. Asmunsen replied. "Only
a short time ago I had my books gone through for the
past ten years. I discovered that for those ten years
my gain was just equivalent to a manager's salary.
The railroad might just as well have owned my quarry
and hired me to run it."
"But with this difference," Ernest laughed; "the
railroad would have had to assume all the risk which
you so obligingly assumed for it."
"Very true," Mr. Asmunsen answered sadly.
Having let them have their say, Ernest began asking
questions right and left. He began with Mr. Owen.
"You started a branch store here in Berkeley about
six months ago?"
"Yes," Mr. Owen answered.
THE MACHINE BREAKERS 123
''And since then I've noticed that three little corner
groceries have gone out of business. Was your branch
store the cause of it?"
Mr. Owen affirmed with a complacent smile. ''They
had no chance against us."
'^Whynot?"
"We had greater capital. With a large business
there is always less waste and greater eflBiciency."
"And your branch store absorbed the profits of the
three small ones. I see. But tell me, what became
of the owners of the three stores?"
"One is driving a delivery wagon for us. I don't
know what happened to the other two."
Ernest turned abruptly on Mr. Kowalt.
"You sell a great deal at cut-rates,^ What have
become of the owners of the small drug stores that you
forced to the wall?"
"One of them, Mr. Haasfurther, has charge now of
our prescription department," was the answer.
"And you absorbed the profits they had been mak-
ing?"
"Surely. That is what we are in business for."
"And you ? " Ernest said suddenly to Mr, Asmunsen.
"You are disgusted because the railroad has absorbed
your profits?"
* A lowering of selling price to cost, and even to less than cost.
Thus, a large company could sell at a loss for a longer period than a
small company, and so drive the small company out of business. A
common device of competition.
124 THE IRON HEEL
Mr. Asmunsen nodded.
''What 3^ou want is to make profits yourself?"
Again Mr. Asmunsen nodded.
''Out of others?"
There was no answer.
"Out of others?" Ernest insisted.
"That is the way profits are made," Mr. Asmunsen
repHed curtly.
"Then the business game is to make profits out of
others, and to prevent others from making profits out
of you. That's it, isn't it?"
Ernest had to repeat his question before Mr. Asmun-
sen gave an answer, and then he said :
"Yes, that's it, except that we do not object to the
others making profits so long as they are not extor-
tionate."
"By extortionate you mean large ; yet you do not ob-
ject to making large profits yourself? . . . Surely not?"
And Mr. Asmunsen amiably confessed to the weak-
ness. There was one other man who was quizzed by
Ernest at this juncture, a Mr. Calvin, who had once
been a great dairy-owner.
"Some time ago you were fighting the Milk Trust,"
Ernest said to him ; "and now you are in Grange poli-
tics.^ How did it happen ? "
^ * Many efiforts were made during this period to organize the perish-
ing farmer class into a political party, the aim of which was to destroy
the trusts and corporations by drastic legislation. All such attempts
ended in failure.
THE MACHINE BREAKERS 125
"Oh, I haven't quit the fight," Mr. Calvin answered,
and he looked belligerent enough. ''I'm fighting the
Trust on the only field where it is possible to fight —
the political field. Let me show you. A few years ago
we dairymen had everything our own way."
''But you competed among yourselves?" Ernest
interrupted.
"Yes, that was what kept the profits down. We
did try to organize, but independent dairymen always
broke through us. Then came the Milk Trust."
"Financed by surplus capital from Standard Oil," ^
Ernest said.
"Yes," Mr. Calvin acknowledged. "But we did
not know it at the time. Its agents approached us
with a club. 'Come in and be fat,' was their proposi-
tion, 'or stay out and starve.' Most of us came in.
Thosethat didn't, starved. Oh, it paid us . . . at first.
Milk was raised a cent a quart. One-quarter of this
cent came to us. Three-quarters of it w^ent to the
Trust. Then milk was raised another cent, only we
didn't get any of that cent. Our complaints were use-
less. The Trust was in control. We discovered that
we were pawns. Finally, the additional quarter of a
cent was denied us. Then the Trust began to squeeze
us out. What could we do? We were squeezed out.
There were no dairymen, only a Milk Trust."
' The first successful great trust — almost a generation in advance
of the rest.
126 THE IRON HEEL
"But with milk two cents higher, I should think
you could have competed," Ernest suggested slyly.
"So we thought. We tried it." Mr. Calvin paused
a moment. "It broke us. The Trust could put milk
upon the market more cheaply than we. It could sell
still at a slight profit when we were selling at actual
loss. I dropped fifty thousand dollars in that venture.
Most of us went bankrupt.^ The dairymen were wiped
out of existence."
"So the Trust took your profits away from you,"
Ernest said, "and you've gone into politics in order to
legislate the Trust out of existence and get the profits
back?"
Mr. Calvin's face lighted up. ''That is precisely
what I say in my speeches to the farmers. That's our
whole idea in a nutshell."
"And yet the Trust produces milk more cheaply
than could the independent dairymen?" Ernest
queried.
"Why shouldn't it, with the splendid organization
and new machinery its large capital makes possible?"
"There is no discussion," Ernest answered. "It
certainly should, and, furthermore, it does."
Mr. Calvin here launched out into a political speech
in exposition of his views. He was warmly followed by
* Bankruptcy — a peculiar institution that enabled an individual,
who had failed in competitive industry, to forego paying his debts.
The effect was to ameUorate the too savage conditions of the fang-
and-claw social struggle.
THE MACHINE BREAKERS 127
a number of the others, and the cry of all was to destroy
the trusts.
''Poor simple folk," Ernest said to me in an under-
tone. ''They see clearly as far as they see, but they
see only to the ends of their noses."
A little later he got the floor again, and in his charac-
teristic way controlled it for the rest of the evening.
''I have listened carefully to all of you," he began,
''and I see plainly that you play the business game in
the orthodox fashion. Life sums itself up to you in
profits. You have a firm and abiding belief that you
were created for the sole purpose of making profits.
Only there is a hitch. In the midst of your own profit-
making along comes the trust and takes your profits
away from you. This is a dilemma that interferes
somehow with the aim of creation, and the only way
out, as it seems to you, is to destroy that which takes
from you your profits.
"I have listened carefully, and there is only one name
that will epitomize you. I shall call you that name.
You are machine-breakers. Do you know what a
machine-breaker is? Let me tell you. In the eigh-
teenth century, in England, men and women wove
cloth on hand-looms in their own cottages. It was a
slow, clumsy, and costly way of weaving cloth, this
cottage system of manufacture. Along came the steam-
engine and labor-saving machinery. A thousand looms
assembled in a large factory, and driven by a central
128 THE IRON HEEL
engine wove cloth vastly more cheaply than could the
cottage weavers on their hand-looms. Here in the
factory was combination, and before it competition
faded away. The men and women who had worked
the hand-looms for themselves now went into the fac-
tories and worked the machine-looms, not for them-
selves, but for the capitalist owners. Furthermore,
little children went to work on the machine-looms, at
lower wages, and displaced the men. This made hard
times for the men. Their standard of living fell. They
starved. And they said it was all the fault of the
machines. Therefore they proceeded to break the
machines. They did not succeed, and they were very
stupid.
''Yet you have not learned their lesson. Here are
you, a century and a half later, trying to break machines.
By your own confession the trust machines do the work
more efficiently and more cheaply than you can. That
is why you cannot compete vath them. And yet you
would break those machines. You are even more
stupid than the stupid workmen of England. And
while you maunder about restoring competition, the
trusts go on destroying you.
''One and all you tell the same story, — the passing
away of competition and the coming on of combination.
You, Mr. Owen, destroyed competition here in Berkeley
when your branch store drove the three small groceries
out of business. Your combination was more effective.
THE MACHINE BREAKERS 129
Yet you feel the pressure of other combinations on you,
the trust combinations, and you cry out. It is because
you are not a trust. If you were a grocery trust for
the whole United States, you would be singing another
song. And the song would be, 'Blessed are the trusts.'
And yet again, not only is your small combination not
a trust, but you are aware yourself of its lack of strength.
You are beginning to divine your own end. You feel
yourself and your branch stores a pawn in the game.
You see the powerful interests rising and growing more
powerful day by day; you feel their mailed hands
descending upon your profits and taking a pinch here
and a pinch there — the railroad trust, the oil trust,
the steel trust, the coal trust; and you know that in
the end they will destroy you, take away from you the
last per cent of your little profits.
''You, sir, are a poor gamester. When you squeezed
out the three small groceries here in Berkeley by virtue
of your superior combination, you swelled out your
chest, talked about efficiency and enterprise, and sent
your wife to Europe on the profits you had gained by
eating up the three small groceries. It is dog eat dog,
and you ate them up. But, on the other hand, you
are being eaten up in turn by the bigger dogs, wherefore
you squeal. And what I say to you is true of all of you
at this table. You are all squealing. You are all play-
ing the losing game, and you are all squealing about it.
"But when you squeal you don't state the situation
130 THE IRON HEEL
flatly, as I have stated it. You don't say that you hke
to squeeze profits out of others, and that you are mak-
ing all the row because others are squeezing your profits
out of you. No, you are too cunning for that. You
say something else. You make small-capitalist political
speeches such as Mr. Calvin made. What did he say?
Here are a few of his phrases I caught: 'Our original
principles are all right,' 'What this country requires
is a return to fundamental American methods — free
opportunity for all,' 'The spirit of liberty in which
this nation was born,' 'Let us return to the principles
of our forefathers.'
"When he says 'free opportunity for all,' he means
free opportunity to squeeze profits, which freedom of
opportunity is now denied him. by the great trusts.
And the absurd thing about it is that you have repeated
these phrases so often that you believe them. You
want opportunity to plunder your fellow-men in your
own small way, but you hypnotize yourselves into
thinking you want freedom. You are piggish and ac-
quisitive, but the magic of your phrases leads you to
believe that you are patriotic. Your desire for profits,
which is sheer selfishness, you metamorphose into
altruistic solicitude for suffering humanity. Come on
now, right here amongst ourselves, and be honest for
once. Look the matter in the face and state it in direct
terms."
There Avere flushed and angry faces at the table, and
THE AL^CHINE BREAKERS 131
withal a measure of awe. They were a httle frightened
at this smooth-faced young fellow, and the swing and
smash of his words, and his dreadful trait of calling a
spade a spade. Mr. Calvin promptly replied.
''And why not?" he demanded. ''Why can we not
return to the ways of our fathers when this republic
was founded ? You have spoken much truth, Mr. Ever-
hard, unpalatable though it has been. But here
amongst ourselves let us speak out. Let us throw off all
disguise and accept the truth as Mr. JSverhard has flatly
stated it. It is true that we smaller capitalists are
after profits, and that the trusts are taking our profits
away from us. It is true that we want to destroy the
trusts in order that our profits may remain to us. And
why can we not do it ? Why not? I say, why not ? "
"Ah, now we come to the gist of the matter," Ernest
said with a pleased expression. "I'll try to tell you
why not, though the telling will be rather hard. You
see, you fellows have studied business, in a small way,
but you have not studied social evolution at all. You
are in the midst of a transition stage now in economic
evolution, but you do not understand it, and that's
what causes all the confusion. Why cannot you
return? Because you can't. You can no more make
water run up hill than can you cause the tide of economic
evolution to flow back in its channel along the way it
came. Joshua made the sun stand still upon Gibeon,
but you would outdo Joshua. You would make the
132 THE IRON HEEL
sun go backward in the sky. You would have time
retrace its steps from noon to morning.
''In the face of labor-saving machinery, of organized
production, of the increased efficiency of combination,
you would set the economic sun back a whole genera-
tion or so to the time when there were no great capi-
talists, no great machinery, no railroads — a time
when a host of little capitalists warred with each other
in economic anarchy, and when production was primi-
tive, wasteful, unorganized, and costly. Believe me,
Joshua's task was easier, and he had Jehovah to help
him. But God has forsaken you small capitalists.
The sun of the small capitalists is setting. It will never
rise again. Nor is it in your power even to make it
stand still. You are perishing, and you are doomed to
perish utterly from the face of society.
''This is the fiat of evolution. It is the word of God.
Combination is stronger than competition. Primitive
man was a puny creature hiding in the crevices of the
rocks. He combined and made war upon his carniv-
orous enemies. They were competitive beasts. Primi-
tive man was a combinative beast, and because of it he
rose to primacy over all the animals. And man has
been achieving greater and greater combinations ever
since. It is combination versus competition, a thou-
sand centuries long struggle, in which competition has
always been worsted. Whoso enlists on the side of
competition perishes."
THE MACHINE BREAKERS 133
^'But the trusts themselves arose out of competition,"
Mr. Calvin interrupted.
"Very true," Ernest answered. ''And the trusts
themselves destroyed competition. That, by your own
word, is why you are no longer in the dairy business."
The first laughter of the evening went around the
table, and even Mr. Calvin joined in the laugh against
himself.
"And now, while we are on the trusts," Ernest went
on, ''let us settle a few things. I shall make certain
statements, and if you disagree with them, speak up.
Silence will mean agreement. Is it not true that a
machine-loom will weave more cloth and weave more
cheaply than a hand-loom?" He paused, but nobody
spoke up. "Is it not then highly irrational to break
the machine-loom and go back to the clumsy and more
costly hand-loom method of weaving ? " Heads nodded
in acquiescence. "Is it not true that that combination
known as a trust produces more efficiently and cheaply
than can a thousand competing small concerns?"
Still no one objected. "Then is it not irrational to
destroy that cheap and efficient combination?"
No one answered for a long time. Then Mr. Kowalt
spoke.
"What are we to do, then?" he demanded. "To
destroy the trusts is the only way we can see to escape
their domination."
Ernest was all fire and aliveness on the instant.
134 THE IRON HEEL
''I'll show you another way!" he cried. ''Let us
not destroy those wonderful machines that produce
efficiently and cheaply. Let us control them. Let us
profit by their efficiency and cheapness. Let us run
them for ourselves. Let us oust the present owners of
the wonderful machines, and let us own the wonderful
machines ourselves. That, gentlemen, is sociahsm, a
greater combination than the trusts, a greater economic
and social combination than any that has as yet ap-
peared on the planet. It is in line with evolution.
We meet combination with greater combination. It
is the winning side. Come on over with us socialists
and play on the winning side."
Here arose dissent. There was a shaking of heads,
and mutterings arose.
"All right, then, you prefer to be anachronisms,"
Ernest laughed. "You prefer to play atavistic roles.
You are doomed to perish as all atavisms perish. Have
you ever asked what will happen to you when greater
combinations than even the present trusts arise?
Have you ever considered where you will stand when
the great trusts themselves combine into the com-
bination of combinations — into the social, economic,
and political trust?"
He turned abruptly and irrelevantly upon Mr. Calvin.
"Tell me," Ernest said, "if this is not true. You are
compelled to form a new political party because the
old parties are in the hands of the trusts. The chief
THE MACHINE BREAKERS 135
obstacle to your Grange propaganda is the trusts.
Behind every obstacle you encounter, every blow that
smites you, every defeat that you receive, is the hand
of the trusts. Is this not so? Tell me."
Mr. Calvin sat in uncomfortable silence.
''Go ahead," Ernest encouraged.
''It is true, "Mr. Calvin confessed. "We captured the
state legislature of Oregon and put through splendid
protective legislation, and it was vetoed by the gov-
ernor, who was a creature of the trusts. We elected a
governor of Colorado, and the legislature refused to
permit him to take office. Twice we have passed a
national income tax, and each time the supreme
court smashed it as unconstitutional. The courts are
in the hands of the trusts. We, the people, do not pay
our judges sufficiently. But there will come a time — "
"When the combination of the trusts will control
all legislation, when the combination of the trusts will
itself be the government," Ernest interrupted.
"Never! never!" were the cries that arose. Every-
body was excited and belligerent,
"Tell me," Ernest demanded, "what will you do
when such a time comes?"
"We will rise in our strength !" Mr. Asmunsen cried,
and many voices backed his decision.
"That will be civil war," Ernest warned them.
"So be it, civil war," was Mr. Asmunsen's answer,
with the cries of all the men at the table behind him.
136 THE IRON HEEL
"We have not forgotten the deeds of our forefathers.
For our liberties we are ready to fight and die."
Ernest smiled.
"Do not forget/' he said, "that we had tacitly-
agreed that hberty in your case, gentlemen, means
liberty to squeeze profits out of others."
The table was angry, now, fighting angry ; but Ernest
controlled the tumult and made himself heard.
"One more question. When you rise in your
strength, remember, the reason for your rising will be
that the government is in the hands of the trusts.
Therefore, against your strength the government will
turn the regular army, the navy, the militia, the police
— in short, the w^hole organized war machinery of the
United States. Where will your strength be then?"
Dismay sat on their faces, and before they could
recover, Ernest struck again.
"Do you remember, not so long ago, when our regular
army was only fifty thousand ? Year by year it has been
increased until to-day it is three hundred thousand."
Again he struck.
"Nor is that all. Y/hile you diligently pursued that
favorite phantom of yours, called profits, and moralized
about that favorite fetich of yours, called competition,
even greater and more direful things have been accom-
plished by combination. There is the militia."
"It is our strength!" cried Mr. Kowalt. "With it
we would repel the invasion of the regular army."
THE MACHINE BREAKERS 137
"You would go into the militia yourself," was
Ernest's retort, ''and be sent to Maine, or Florida, or
the Philippines, or anywhere else, to drown in blood
your own comrades civil-warring for their liberties.
While from Kansas, or Wisconsin, or any other state,
your own comrades would go into the militia and
come here to California to drown in blood your own
civil-warring."
Now they were really shocked, and they sat wordless,
until Mr. Owen murmured :
''We would not go into the militia. That would
settle it. We would not be so foolish."
Ernest laughed outright.
"You do not understand the combination that has
been effected. You could not help yourself. You
would be drafted into the militia."
"There is such a thing as civil law," Mr. Owen
insisted.
"Not when the government suspends civil law. In
that day when you speak of rising in your strength,
your strength would be turned against yourself. Into
the militia you would go, willy-nilly. Habeas corpus, I
heard some one mutter just now. Instead of habeas
corpus you would get post mortems. If you refused
to go into the militia, or to obey after you were in, you
would be tried by drumhead court martial and shot
down like dogs. It is the law."
"It is not the law!" Mr. Calvin asserted positively.
138 THE IRON HEEL
"There is no such law. Young man, you have dreamed
' all this. Why, you spoke of sending the militia to the
PhiHppines. That is unconstitutional. The Consti-
tution especially states that the militia cannot be sent
out of the country."
''What's the Constitution got to do with it?" Ernest
demanded. ''The courts interpret the Constitution, and
the courts, as Mr. Asmunsen agreed, are the creatures of
the trusts. Besides, it is as I have said, the law. It has
been the law for years, for nine years, gentlemen."
"That we can be drafted into the mihtia?" Mr. Cal-
vin asked incredulously. "That they can shoot us by
drumhead court martial if we refuse?"
"Yes," Ernest answered, "precisely that."
"How is it that we have never heard of this law?"
my father asked, and I could see that it was likewise
new to him.
"For two reasons," Ernest said. "First, there has
been no need to enforce it. If there had, you'd have
heard of it soon enough. And secondly, the law was
rushed through Congress and the Senate secretly,
with practically no discussion. Of course, the news-
papers made no mention of it. But we sociaHsts knew
about it. We published it in our papers. But you
never read our papers."
"I still insist you are dreaming," Mr. Calvin said stub-
bornly. "The country would never have permitted it."
"But the country did permit it," Ernest replied.
THE MACHINE BREAKERS 139
a
And as for my dreaming — " he put his hand in his
pocket and drew out a small pamphlet — ^'tell me if
this looks like dream-stuff."
He opened it and began to read:
''' Section One, be it enacted, and so forth and so
forth, that the militia shall consist of every able-bodied
male citizen of the respective states, territories, and
District of Columbia, who is more than eighteen and
less than forty-five years of age.'
"'Section Seven, that any officer or enlisted man' —
remember Section One, gentlemen, you are all enlisted
men — Hhat any enlisted man of the militia who shall
refuse or neglect to present himself to such mustering
officer upon being called forth as herein prescribed, shall
be subject to trial by court m.artial, and shall be pun-
ished as such court martial shall direct.'
'''Section Eight, that courts martial, for the trial
of officers or men of the militia, shall be composed of
militia officers only.'
"'Section Nine, that the militia, when called into the
actual service of the United States, shall be subject
to the same rules and articles of war as the regular
troops of the United States.'
"There you are, gentlemen, American citizens,
and fellow-militiamen. Nine years ago we socialists
thought that law was aimed against labor. But it
would seem that it was aimed against you, too. Con-
gressman Wiley, in the brief discussion that was per-
140 THE IRON HEEL
mitted, said that the bill 'provided for a reserve force
to take the moh by the throat' — you're the mob,
gentlemen — 'and protect at all hazards life, liberty,
and property.' And in the time to come, when you
rise in your strength, remember that you will be rising
against the property of the trusts, and the liberty of the
trusts, according to the law, to squeeze you. Your
teeth are pulled, gentlemen. Your claws are trimmed.
In the day you rise in your strength, toothless and
clawless, you will be as harmless as an army of clams."
"I don't believe it!" Kowalt cried. "There is no
such law. It is a canard got up by you sociaUsts."
"This bill was introduced in the House of Repre-
sentatives on July 30, 1902," was the reply. "It was
introduced by Representative Dick of Ohio. It was
rushed through. It was passed unanimously by the
Senate on January 14, 1903. And just seven days
afterward was approved by the President of the
United States." '
^ Everhard was right in the essential particulars, though his date
of the introduction of the bill is in error. The bill was introduced on
June 30, and not on July 30. The Congressional Record is here in
Ardis, and a reference to it shows mention of the bill on the following
dates: June 30, December 9, 15, 16, and 17, 1902, and January 7 and
14, 1903. The ignorance evidenced by the business men at the dinner
was nothing unusual. Very few people knew of the existence of this
law. E. Untermann, a revolutionist, in July, 1903, published a pam-
phlet at Girard, Kansas, on the "Militia Bill." This pamphlet had a
small circulation among workingmen ; but already had the segregation
of classes proceeded so far, that the members of the middle class never
heard of the pamphlet at all, and so remained in ignorance of the
law.
CHAPTER IX
THE :\IATHEMATICS OF A DREAM
In the midst of the consternation his revelation liad
produced, Ernest began again to speak.
''You have said, a dozen of you to-night, that social-
ism is impossible. You have asserted the impossible,
now let me demonstrate the inevitable. Not only is it
inevitable that you small capitalists shall pass away,
but it is inevitable that the large capitalists, and the
trusts also, shall pass away. Remember, the tide of
evolution never flows backward. It flows on and on,
and it flows from competition to combination, and from
little combination to large combination, and from large
combination to colossal combination, and it flows on to
socialism, which is the most colossal combination oLalL--
"You tell me that I dream. Very good. I'll give
you the mathematics of my dream; and here, in ad-
vance, I challenge you to show that my mathematics are
wrong. I shall develop the inevitability of the break-
down of the capitalist system, and I shall demonstrate
mathematically why it must break down. Here goes,
and bear with me if at first I seem irrelevant.
"Let us, first of all, investigate a particular industrial
process, and whenever I state something with which
141
142 THE IRON HEEL
you disagree, please interrupt me. Here is a shoe
factory. This factory takes leather and makes it into
shoes. Here is one hundred dollars' worth of leather.
It goes through the factory and comes out in the form
of shoes, worth, let us say, two hundred dollars. What
has happened? One hundred dollars has been added
to the value of the leather. How was it added? Let
us see.
''Capital and labor added this value of one hundred
dollars. Capital furnished the factory, the machines,
and paid all the expenses. Labor furnished labor.
By the joint effort of capital and labor one hundred
dollars of value was added. Are you all agreed so far ? "
Heads nodded around the table in affirmation.
''Labor and capital having produced this one hundred
dollars, now proceed to divide it. The statistics of this
division are fractional ; so let us, for the sake of con-
venience, make them roughly approximate. Capital
takes fifty dollars as its share, and labor gets in wages
fifty dollars as its share. We will not enter into the
squabbling over the division.^ No matter how much
squabbling takes place, in one percentage or another the
1 Everhard here clearly develops the cause of all the labor troubles
of that time. In the division of the joint-product, capital v/anted all
it could get, and labor wanted all it could get. This quarrel over
the division was irreconcilable. So long as the system of capitalistic
production existed, labor and capital continued to quarrel over the
division of the joint-product. It is a ludicrous spectacle to us, but
we must not forget that we have seven centuries' advantage over those
that lived in that time.
THE MATHEMATICS OF A DREAM 143
division is arranged. And take notice here, that what
is true of this particular industrial process is true of all
industrial processes. Am I right?"
Again the whole table agreed with Ernest.
"Now, suppose labor, having received its fifty dollars,
wanted to buy back shoes. It could only buy back
fifty dollars' worth. That's clear, isn't it ?
"And now we shift from this particular process to the
sum total of all industrial processes in the United States,
which includes the leather itself, raw material, trans-
portation, selling, everything. We will say, for the
sake of round figures, that the total production of
wealth in the United States in one year is four billion
dollars. Then labor has received in wages, during the
same period, two_billion dollars. Four billion dollars
has been produced. How much of this can labor buy
back? Two billions. There is no discussion of this,
I am sure. For that matter, my percentages are mild.
Because of a thousand capitalistic devices, labor cannot
buy back even half of the total product.
"But to return. We will say labor buys back two
billions. Then it stands to reason that labor can con-
sume only two billions. There are still two billions to
be accounted for, which labor cannot buy back and
consume."
"Labor does not consume its two billions, even," Mr.
Kowalt spoke up. "If it did, it would not have any
deposits in the savings banks."
144 THE IRON HEEL
''Labor's deposits in the savings banks arc only a sort \
of reserve fund that is consumed as fast as it accumu-
lates. These deposits are saved for old age, for sickness
and accident, and for funeral expenses. The savings
bank deposit is simply a piece of the loaf put back on
the shelf to be eaten next day. No, labor consumes all
of the total product that its wages will buy back.
''Two billions are left to capital. After it has paid
its expenses, does it consume the remainder? Does
capital consume all of its two billions?"
Ernest stopped and put the question point blank to a
number of the men. They shook their heads.
''I don't know," one of them frankly said.
"Of course you do," Ernest went on. "Stop and
think a moment. If capital consumed its share, the
sum total of capital could not increase. It would re-
main constant. If you will look at the economic his-
tory of the United States, you will see that the sum total
of capital has continually increased. Therefore cap-
ital does not consume its share. Do you remember
when England owned so much of our railroad bonds?
As the years went by, we bought back those bonds.
What does that mean? That part of capital's uncon-
sumed share bought back the bonds. What is the
meaning of the fact that to-day the capitalists of the
United States own hundreds and hundreds of millions
of dollars of Mexican bonds, Russian bonds, Italian
bonds, Grecian bonds? The meaning is that those
THE MATHEMATICS OF A DREAM 145
hundreds and hundreds of millions were part of capital's
share which capital did not consume. Furthermore,
from the very beginning of the capitalist system, capi-
tal has never consumed all of its share.
''And now we come to the point. Four billion dol-
lars of wealth is produced in one year in the United
States. Labor bu3'S back and consumes two billions.
Capital does not consume the remaining two billions.
There is a large balance left over unconsumed. What
is done with this balance ? What can be done with it ?
Labor cannot consume any of it, for labor has already
spent all its wages. Capital will not consume this
balance, because, already, according to its nature, it
has consumed all it can. And still remains the balance.
What can be done with it? What is done with it?"
''It is sold abroad," Mr. Kowalt volunteered.
"The very thing," Ernest agreed. "Because of this
balance arises our need for a foreign market. This is
sold abroad. It has to be sold abroad. There is no
other way of getting rid of it. And that uncon-
sumed surplus, sold abroad, becomes what we call
our favorable balance of trade. Are we all agreed
so far?"
"Surely it is a waste of time to elaborate these
ABC's of commerce," Mr. Calvin said tartly. "We
all understand them."
"And it is by these ABC's I have so carefully
elaborated that I shall confound you," Ernest retorted.
146 THE IRON HEEL
"There's the beauty of it. And I'm going to confound
you with them right now. Here goes.
''The United States is a capitalist country that has
developed its resources. According to its capitalist
system of industry, it has an unconsumed surplus that
must be got rid of, and that must be got rid of abroad/
What is true of the United States is true of every other
capitalist country with developed resources. Every
one of such countries has an unconsumed surplus.
Don't forget that they have already traded with one
another, and that these surpluses yet remain. Labor
in all these countries has spent its wages, and cannot
buy any of the surpluses. Capital in all these countries
has already consumed all it is able according to its
nature. And still remain the surpluses. They cannot
dispose of these surpluses to one another. How are they
going to get rid of them?"
"Sell them to countries with undeveloped resources,'*
Mr. Kowalt suggested.
"The very thing. You see, my argument is so clear
* Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States a few years
prior to this time, made the following public declaration : " A more
liberal and extensive reciprocity in the purchase and sale of commodities
is necessary, so that the overproduction of the United States can be satis-
j ,. factorily disposed of to foreign countries." Of course, this overproduc-
[;' !"'- '.{ tion he mentions was the profits of the capitalist system over and
V- V beyond the consuming power of the capitalists. It was at this time
\ \ that Senator Mark Hanna said : " The production of wealth in the
\ United States is one-third larger annually than its consumption." Also
a fellow-Senator, Chauncey Depew, said: "The American people
produce annually two billions more wealth than they consume,"
THE MATHEMATICS OF A DREAM 147
and simple that in your own minds you carry it on for
me. And now for the next step. Suppose the United
States disposes of its surplus to a country with unde-
veloped resources like, say, Brazil. Remember this
surplus is over and above trade, which articles of trade
have been consumed. What, then, does the United
States get in return from Brazil?"
''Gold," said Mr. Kowalt.
''But there is only so much gold, and not much of it,
in the world," Ernest objected.
"Gold in the form of securities and bonds and so
forth," Mr. Kowalt amended.
"Now you've struck it," Ernest said. "From Brazil
the United States, in return for her surplus, gets bonds
and securities. And what does that mean ? It means
that the United States is coming to own railroads in
Brazil, factories, mines, and lands in Brazil. And
what is the meaning of that in turn?"
Mr. Kowalt pondered and shook his head.
"I'll tell you," Ernest continued. "It means that
the resources of Brazil are being developed. And now,
the next point. When Brazil, under the capitalist
system, has developed her resources, she will herself
have an unconsumed surplus. Can she get rid of this
surplus to the United States ? No, because the United
States has herself a surplus. Can the United States do
what she previously did — get rid of her surplus to
Brazil ? No, for Brazil now has a surplus, too.
148 THE IRON HEEL
"What happens? The United States and Brazil
must both seek out other countries with undeveloped
resources, in order to unload the surpluses on them.
But by the very process of unloading the surpluses,
the resources of those countries are in turn developed.
Soon they have surpluses, and are seeking other coun-
tries on which to unload. Now, gentlemen, follow me.
The planet is only so large. There are only so many
countries in the world. What will happen when every
country in the world, down to the smallest and last,
with a surplus in its hands, stands confronting every
other country with surpluses in their hands?"
He paused and regarded his listeners. The bepuzzle-
ment in their faces was delicious. Also, there was awe
in their faces. Out of abstractions Ernest had conjured
a vision and made them see it. They were seeing
it then, as they sat there, and they were frightened
by it.
''We started with ABC, Mr. Calvin," Ernest said
slyly. ''I have now given you the rest of the alphabet.
It is very simple. That is the beauty of it. You
surely have the answer forthcoming. What, then,
when every country in the world has an unconsumed
surplus? Where will your capitalist system be
then?"
But Mr. Calvin shook a troubled head. He was ob-
viously questing back through Ernest's reasoning in
search of an error.
THE MATHEMATICS OF A DREAM 149
''Let me briefly go over the ground with you again,"
Ernest said. ''We began with a particular industrial
process, the shoe factory. We found that the division
of the joint product that took place there was similar
to the division that took place in the sum total of all
industrial processes. We found that labor could buy
back with, its wages only so much of the product, and
that capital did not consume all of the remainder of
the product. We found that when labor had con-
sumed to the full extent of its wages, and when
capital had consumed all it wanted, there was
still left an unconsumed surplus. We agreed that
this surplus could only be disposed of abroad. We
agreed, also, that the effect of unloading this sur-
plus on another country w^ould be to develop the
resources of that country, and that in a short time
that country would have an unconsumed surplus.
We extended this process to all the countries on the
planet, till every country was producing every year,
and every day, an unconsumed surplus, which it
could dispose of to no other country. And now I
ask you again, what are we going to do with those
surpluses?"
Still no one answered.
"Mr. Calvin?" Ernest queried.
"It beats me," Mr. Calvin confessed.
"I never dreamed of such a thing," Mr. Asmunsen
said. "And yet it does seem clear as print."
150 THE IRON HEEL
It was the first time I had ever heard Karl Marx's *
doctrine of surphis value elaborated, and Ernest had
done it so simply that I, too, sat puzzled and dum-
founded.
''I'll tell you a way to get rid of the surplus/' Ernest
said. ''Throw it into the sea. Throw every year hun-
dreds of millions of dollars' worth of shoes and wheat
and clothing and all the commodities of commerce into
the sea. Won't that fix it?"
''It will certainly fix it," Mr. Calvin answered. "But
it is absurd for you to talk that way."
Ernest was upon him like a flash.
"Is it a bit more absurd than what you advocate,
you machine-breaker, returning to the antediluvian
ways of your forefathers? What do you propose in
order to get rid of the surplus? You would escape the
problem of the surplus by not producing any surplus.
And how do you propose to avoid producing a surplus ?
By returning to a primitive method of production, so
confused and disorderly and irrational, so wasteful and
costly, that it will be impossible to produce a surplus."
Mr. Calvin swallowed. The point had been driven
home. He swallowed again and cleared his throat.
* Karl Marx — the great intellectual hero of Socialism. A German
Jew of the nineteenth century. A contemporary of John Stuart Mill.
It seems incredible to us that whole generations should have elapsed
after the enunciation of Marx's economic discoveries, in which time
he was sneered at by the world's accepted thinkers and scholars.
Because of his discoveries he was banished from his native coimtry,
and he died an exile in England.
THE MATHEMATICS OF A DREAM 151
"You are right," he said. '^I stand convicted. It
is absurd. But we've got to do something. It is a
case of hfe and death for us of the middle class. We
refuse to perish. We elect to be absurd and to return
to the truly crude and wasteful methods of our fore-
fathers. vWe will put back industry to its pre-trust
stage. We will break the machines_^ And what are
you going to do about it?"
''But you can't break the machines," Ernest replied.
"You cannot make the tide of evolution flow backward.
Opposed to you are two great forces, each of which
is more powerful than you of the middle class. The
large capitalists, the trusts, in short, will not let you
turn back. They don't want the machines destroyed.
And greater than the trusts, and more powerful, is
labor. It will not let you destroy the machines. The
ownership of the world, along with the machines, lies
between the trusts and labor. That is the battle
alignment. Neither side wants the destruction of the
machines. But each side wants to possess the machines.
In this battle the middle class has no place. The mid-
dle class is a pygmy between two giants. Don't you
see, you poor perishing middle class, you are caught
between the upper and nether millstones, and even now
has the grinding begun.
"I have demonstrated to you mathematically the in-
evitable breakdown of the capitalist system. When
every country stands with an unconsumed and unsal-
152 THE IRON HEEL
able surplus on its hands, the capitalist syrtem will
break down under the terrific structure of profits that
it itself has reared. And in that day there won't be
any destruction of the machines. The struggle then
will be for the ownership of the machines. If labor
wins, your way will be easy. The United States, and
the whole world for that matter, will enter upon a
new and tremendous era. Instead of being crushed
by the machines, life wdll be made fairer, and happier,
and nobler by them. You of the destroyed middle
class, along with labor — there will be nothing but labor
then ; so you, and all the rest of labor, will participate
in the equitable destribution of the products of the
wonderful machines. And we, all of us, wiU make
new and more wonderful machines. And there won't
be any unconsumed surplus, because there won't be
any profits.'*
''But suppose the trusts win in this battle over the
ownership of the machines and the world?" Mr.
Kowalt asked.
''Then," Ernest answered, '^you, and labor, and all
of us, will be crushed under the iron heel of a despotism
as relentless and terrible as any despotism that has
blackened the pages of the history of man. That will
be a good name for that despotism, the Iron Heel." ^
There was a long pause, and every man at the table
meditated in ways unwonted and profound.
' The earliest known use of that name to designate the Oligarchy.
THE MATHEMATICS OF A DREMI 153
''But this socialism of yours is a dream," Mr. Calvin
said; and repeated, " Si dream."
''I'll show you something that isn't a dream, then,"
Ernest answered. "And that something I shall call
the Oligarchy. You call it the Plutocracy. We both
mean the same thing, the large capitalists or the trusts.
Let us see where the power lies to-day. And in order
to do so, let us apportion society into its class divisions.
"There are three big classes in society. First comes
the Plutocracy, which is composed of wealthy bankers,
railway magnates, corporation directors, and trust
magnates. Second, is the middle class, your class,
gentlemen, which is composed of farmers, merchants,
small manufacturers, and professional men. And third
and last comes my class, the proletariat, which is
composed of the wage-workers.^
"You cannot but grant that the ownership of wealth '<
constitutes essential power in the United States to-day.
How is this wealth owned by these three classes ? Here
are the figures. The Plutocracy owns sixty-seven
billions of wealth. Of the total number of persons
engaged in occupations in the United States, only
nine-tenths of one per cent are from the Plutocracy,
* This division of society made by Everhard is in accordance with
that made by Lucien Sanial, one of the statistical authorities of that
time. His calculation of the membership of these divisions by occu-
pations, from the United States Census of 1900, is as follows: Pluto-
cratic class, 250,251; Middle class, 8,429,845; and Proletariat class,
20,303,137.
154 THE IRON HEEL
yet the Plutocracy owns seventy per cent of the total
wealth. The middle class owns twenty-four billions.
Twenty-nine per cent of those in occupations are from
the middle class, and they own twenty-five per cent of
the total wealth. Remains the proletariat. It owns
four billions. Of all persons in occupations, seventy
per cent come from the proletariat ; and the prole-
tariat owns four per cent of the total wealth. Where
does the power lie, gentlemen?"
"From your own figures, we of the middle class are
more powerful than labor," Mr. Asmunsen remarked.
''Calling us weak does not make you stronger in the
face of the strength of the Plutocrac}^," Ernest re-
torted. ''And furthermore, I'm not done with you.
There is a greater strength than wealth, and it is greater
because it cannot be taken away. Our strength, the
strength of the protelariat, is in our muscles, in our
hands to cast ballots, in our fingers to pull triggers.
This strength we cannot be stripped of. It is the primi-
tive strength, it is the strength that is to life germane,
it is the strength that is stronger than wealth, and
that wealth cannot take away.
"But your strength is detachable. It can be taken
away from you. Even now the Plutocracy is taking
it away from you. In the end it will take it all away
from you. And then you will cease to be the middle
class. You will descend to us. You will become prole-
tarians. And the beauty of it is that you will then add
THE MATHEMATICS OF A DREAM 155
to our streiigth. We will hail you brothers, and we
will fight shoulder to shoulder in the cause of humanity.
''You see, labor has nothing concrete of which to be
despoiled. Its share of the wealth of the country con-
sists of clothes and household furniture, with here and
there, in very rare cases, an unencumbered home. But
you have the concrete wealth, twenty-four billions of
it, and the Plutocracy will take it away from you. Of
course, there is the large likelihood that the proletariat
will take it away first. Don't you see your position,
gentlemen ? The middle class is a wobbly little lamb
between a lion and a tiger. If one doesn't get you, the
other will. And if the Plutocracy gets you first, why
it's only a matter of time when the. Proletariat gets the
Plutocracy.
''Even 3'our present wealth is not a true measure
of your power. The strength of your wealth at this
moment is only an empty shell. That is why you are
crying out your feeble little battle-cry, 'Return to the
ways of our fathers.' lYou are aware of your impo-
tency. You know that your strength is an empty
shell. And I'll show you the emptiness of it.
"What power have the farmers? Over fifty per
cent are thralls by virtue of the fact that they are
merely tenants or are mortgaged. And all of them
are thralls by virtue of the fact that the trusts already
own or control (which is the same thing only better) —
own and control all the means of marketing the crops, \
156 THE IRON HEEL
such as cold storage, railroads, elevators, and steam-
ship lines. And, furthermore, the trusts control the
markets. In all this the farmers are without power.
As regards their political and governmental power,
I'll take that up later, along with the political and
governmental power of the whole middle class.
''Day by day the trusts squeeze out the farmers as
they squeezed out Mr. Calvin and the rest of the dairy-
men. And day by day are the merchants squeezed
out in the same way. Do you remember how, in six
months, the Tobacco Trust squeezed out over four
hundred cigar stores in New York City alone ? Where
are the old-time owners of the coal fields ? You know
to-day, without my telling you, that the Railroad
Trust owns or controls the entire anthracite and bitu-
minous coal fields. Doesn't the Standard Oil Trust ^
own a score of the ocean lines? And does it not also
control copper, to say nothing of running a smelter
trust as a little side enterprise? There are ten thou-
sand cities in the United States to-night lighted by the
companies owned or controlled by Standard Oil, and
in as many cities all the electric transportation, —
urban, suburban, and interurban, — is in the hands of
Standard Oil. The small capitalists who were in these
thousands of enterprises are gone. You know that.
It's the same way that you are going.
"The small manufacturer is like the farmer; and
1 Standard Oil and Rockefeller — see footnote on page 159.
THE MATHEMATICS OF A DREAM 157
small manufacturers and farmers to-day are reduced,
to all intents and purposes, to feudal tenure. For that
matter, the professional men and the artists are at this
present moment villeins in everything but name, while
the politicians are henchmen. Why do you, Mr. Cal-
vin, work all your nights and days to organize the
farmers, along with the rest of the middle class, into
a new poUtical party? Because the politicians of the
old parties will have nothing to do with your atavistic
ideas ; and with your atavistic ideas, they will have
nothing to do because they are what I said they are,
henchmen, retainers of the Plutocracy.
''I spoke of the professional men and the artists as
villeins. What else are they? One and all, the pro-
fessors, the preachers, and the editors, hold their jobs
by serving the Plutocracy, and their service consists
of propagating only such ideas as are either harmless to
or commendatory of the Plutocracy. ■. Whenever they
propagate ideas that menace the Plutocracy, they lose
their jobs, in which case, if they have not provided for
the rainy day, they descend into the proletariat and
either perish or become working-class agitators. And
don't forget that it is the pre^, the pulpit, and the
university that mould public opinion, set the thought-
pace of the nation. As for the artists, they merely
pander to the little less than ignoble tastes of the
Plutocracy.
''But after all, wealth in itself is not the real power;
158 THE IRON HEEL
it is the means to power, and power is governmental.
Who controls the government to-day ? The proletariat
with its twenty millions engaged in occupations ? Even
you laugh at the idea. Does the middle class, with its
eight million occupied members? No more than the
proletariat. Who, then, controls the government ? The
Plutocracy, with its paltry quarter of a million of occu-
pied members. But this quarter of a million does not
control the government, though it renders yeoman ser-
vice. It is the brain of the Plutocracy that controls
the government, and this brain consists of seven ^
small and powerful groups of men. And do not for-
get that these groups are working to-day practically
in unison.
''Let me point out the power of but one of them, the
railroad group. It employs forty thousand lawyers to
defeat the people in the courts. It issues countless
thousands of free passes to judges, bankers, editors,
ministers, university men, members of state legisla-
^ Even as late as 1907, it was considered that eleven groups domi-
nated the country, but this number was reduced by the amalgamation
of the five railroad groups into a supreme combination of all the rail-
roads. These five groups so amalgamated, along with their financial
and political allies, were (1) James J. Hill with his control of the North-
west; (2) the Pennsylvania railway group, Scliiff financial manager,
with big banking firms of Philadelphia and New York; (3) Harriman,
with Frick for counsel and Odell as political lieutenant, controlling the
central continental, Southwestern and Southern Pacific Coast Unes of
transportation; (4) the Gould family railway interests ; and (5) Moore,
Reid, and Leeds, known as the " Rock Island crowd." These strong
oligarchs arose out of the conflict of competition and travelled the
inevitable road toward combination.
THE MATHEMATICS OF A DREAM 159
tures, and of Congress. It maintains luxurious lob-
bies ^ at every state capital, and at the national capital ;
and in all the cities and towns of the land it employs
an immense army of pettifoggers and small politicians
whose business is to attend primaries, pack conven-
tions, get on juries, bribe judges, and in every way to
work for its interests.^
'^ Gentlemen, I have merely sketched the power of one
of the seven groups that constitute the brain of the
Plutocracy.^ Your twenty-four billions of wealth does
1 Lobby — a peculiar institution for bribing, bulldozing, and cor-
rupting the legislators who were supposed to represent the people's
interests.
^ A decade before this speech of Everhard's, the New York Board
of Trade issued a report from which the following is quoted : " The
railroads control absolutely the legislatures of a majority of the states of
the Union; they make and unmake United States Senators, congressmen,
and governors, and are practically dictators of the governmental policy
of the United States."
^ Rockefeller began as a member of the proletariat, and through
thrift and cunning succeeded in developing the first perfect trust,
namely that knov.'n as Standard Oil. We cannot forbear giving the
following remarkable page from the history of the times, to show how
the need for reinvestment of the Standard Oil surplus crushed out
small capitalists and hastened the breakdown of the capitaUst system.
David Graham Phillips was a radical writer of the period, and the
quotation, by him, is taken from a copy of the Saturday Evening Post,
dated October 4, 1902 a.d. This is the only copy of this publication
that has come down to us, and yet, from its appearance and content,
we cannot but conclude that it was one of the popular periodicals
with a large circulation. The quotation here follows:
" About ten years ago Rockefeller' s income tvas given as thirty millions
by an excellent authority. He had reached the limit of profitable invest-
ment of profits in the oil industry. Here, then, were these enormous
sums in cash pouring in — more than $2,000,000 a month for John
Davison Rockefeller alone. The problem of reinvestment became more
160 THE IRON HEEL
not give you twenty-five cents' worth of governmental
power. It is an empty shell, and soon even the empty
serious. It became a nightmare. The oil income was swelling, swelling,
and the number of sound investments limited, even more limited than
it is now. It was through no special eagerness for more gains that the
Rockefellers began to branch out from oil into other things. They were
forced, swept on by this inrolling tide of wealth which their monopoly
magnet irresistibly attracted. They developed a staff of investment
seekers and investigators. It is said that the chief of this staff has a
salary of $125,000 a year.
" The first conspicuous excursion and incursion of the Rockefellers
was into the railway field. By 1895 they controlled one-fifth of the
railway mileage of the country. What do they own or, through dominant
ownership, control to-day ? They are powerful in all the great railways
of New York, north, east, and west, except one, where their share is only
a few millions. They are in most of the great railways radiating from
Chicago. They dominate in several of the systems that extend to the
Pacific. It is their votes that make Mr. Morgan so potent, though,
it may be added, they need his brains more than he needs their votes —
at present, and the combination of the two constitutes in large measure
the ' community of interest.'
"But railways could not alone absorb rapidly enough those mighty
floods of gold. Presently John D. Rockefeller' s $2,500,000 a month
had increased to four, io five, to six millions a month, to $75,000,000 a
year. Illuminating oil was becoming all profit. The reinvestments of
income were adding their mite of many annual millions.
" The Rockefellers went into gas and electricity when those industries
had developed to the safe investment stage. And now a large part of
the American people must begin to enrich the Rockefellers as soon as the
sun goes down, no matter what form of illuminant they use. They went
into farm mortgages. It is said that when prosperity a few years ago
enabled the farmers to rid themselves of their mortgages, John D. Rocke-
feller was moved almost to tears; eight millions which he had thought
taken care of for years to come at a good interest were suddenly dumped
upon his doorstep and the)-e set up a-squawking for a new home. This
unexpected addition to his worriments in finding places for the progeny
of hi^ petroleum and their progeny and their progeny' s progeny was too
much for the equanimity of a 7nan without a digestion. . . .
" The Rockefellers went into mines — iron and coal and copper and
lead; into other industrial companies ; into street railways, into national.
THE MATHEMATICS OF A DREAM 161
shell will be taken away from you. The Plutocracy
has all power in its hands to-day. It to-day makes
the laws, for it owns the Senate, Congress, the courts,
and the state legislatures. And not only that. Behind
law must be force to execute the law. To-day the
Plutocracy makes the law, and to enforce the law it
has at its beck and call the police^ the army, the navy,
and, lastly, the militia, which is you, and me, and all of
us."
Little discussion took place after this, and the dinner
soon broke up. All were quiet and subdued, and leave-
taking was done with low voices. It seemed almost
that they were scared by the vision of the times they
had seen.
''The situation is, indeed, serious," Mr. Calvin said
state, and 7nunicipal bonds; into steamships and steamboats and teleg-
raphy; into real estate, into sky scrapers and residences and hotels
and business blocks; into life insurance, into banking. There was soon
literally no field of industry where their millions were not at work. . . .
" The Rockefeller bank — the National City Bank — is by itself far
and away the biggest bank in the United States. It is exceeded in the
world only by the Bank of England and the Bank of France. The de-
posits average more than one hundred millions a day; and it dominates
the call loan market on Wall Street and the stock market. But it is not
alone ; it is the head of the Rockefeller chain of banks, xvhich includes
fourteen banks and trust companies in New York City, and banks of
great strength and influence in every large money centre in the country.
" John D. Rockefeller owns Standard Oil stock worth between four and
five hundred millions at the market quotations. He has a hundred mil-
lions in the steel trust, almost as much in a single western railway system,
half as much in a second, and so on and on and on until the mind wearies
of the cataloguing. His income last year was about $100,000,000 — it
is doubtful if the incomes of all the Rothschilds together make a greater
sum. And it is going up by leaps and bounds."
162 THE IRON HEEL
to Ernest. "I have little quarrel with the way you
have depicted it. Only I disagree with you about
the doom of the middle class. We shall survive, and
we shall overthrow the trusts."
"And return to the ways of your fathers," Ernest
finished for him.
"Even so," Mr. Calvin answered gravely. "I know
it's a sort of machine-breaking, and that it is absurd.
But then life seems absurd to-day, what of the machi-
nations of the Plutocracy. And at any rate, our sort
of machine-breaking is at least practical and possible,
which your dream is not. Your socialistic dream is
. . . well, a dream. We cannot follow you."
"I only wish you fellows knew a little something
about evolution and sociology," Ernest said wistfully,
as they shook hands. "We would be saved so much
trouble if you did."
CHAPTER X
THE VORTEX
Following like thunder claps upon the Business
Men's dinner, occurred event after event of terrifying
moment; and I, little I, who had lived so placidly all
my days in the quiet university town, found myself
and my personal affairs drawn into the vortex of the
great world-affairs. Whether it was my love for
Ernest, or the clear sight he had given me of the
society in which I lived, that made me a revolutionist,
I know not; but a revolutionist I became, and I was
plunged into a whirl of happenings that would have
been inconceivable three short months before.
The crisis in my own fortunes came simultaneously
with great crises in society. First of all, father was
discharged from the university. Oh, he was not
technically discharged. His resignation was de-
manded, that was all. This, in itself, did not amount
to much. Father, in fact, was delighted. He was
especially delighted because his discharge had been
precipitated by the publication of his book, ''Econom-
ics and Education." It clinched his argument, he
contended. What better evidence could be advanced
163
164 THE IRON HEEL
to prove that education was dominated by the capitaHst
class?
But this proof never got anywhere. Nobody knew
he had been forced to resign from the university. He
was so eminent a scientist that such an announcement,
coupled with the reason for his enforced resignation,
would have created somewhat of a furor all over the
world. The newspapers showered him with praise
and honor, and commended him for having given up
the drudgery of the lecture room in order to devote his
whole time to scientific research.
At first father laughed. Then he became angry —
tonic angry. Then came the suppression of his book.
This suppression was performed secretly, so secretly
that at first we could not comprehend. The publica-
tion of the book had immediately caused a bit of ex-
citement in the country. Father had been politely
abused in the capitalist press, the tone of the abuse
being to the effect that it was a pity so great a scientist
should leave his field and invade the realm of sociology,
about which he knew nothing and wherein he had
promptly become lost. This lasted for a week, while
father chuckled and said the book had touched a sore
spot on capitalism. And then, abruptly, the news-
papers and the critical magazines ceased saying any-
thing about the book at all. Also, and with equal
suddenness, the book disappeared from the market.
Not a copy was obtainable from any bookseller.
THE VORTEX 165
Father wrote to the publishers and was informed that
the plates had been accidentally injured. An unsatis-
factory correspondence followed. Driven finally to an
unequivocal stand, the publishers stated that they
could not see their way to putting the book into type
again, but that they were quite willing to relinquish
their rights in it.
''And you won't find another publishing house in the
country to touch it," Ernest said. "And if I were
you, I'd hunt cover right now. You've merely got a
foretaste of the Iron Heel."
But father was nothing if not a scientist. He never
believed in jumping to conclusions. A laboratory
experiment was no experiment if it were not carried
through in all its details. So he patiently went the
round of the publishing houses. They gave a multitude
of excuses, but not one house would consider the book.
When father became convinced that the book had
actually been suppressed, he tried to get the fact into
the newspapers ; but his communications were ignored.
At a political meeting of the socialists, where many
reporters were present, father saw his chance. He
arose and related the history of the suppression of the
book. He laughed next day when he read the news-
papers, and then he grew angry to a degree that elimi-
nated all tonic qualities. The papers made no mention
of the book, but they misreported him beautifully.
They twisted his words and phrases away from the
166 THE IRON HEEL
context, and turned his subdued and controlled re-
marks into a howling anarchistic speech. It was done
artfully. One instance, in particular, I remember. He
had used the phrase ''social revolution." The reporter
merely dropped out ''social." This was sent out all
over the country in an Associated Press despatch, and
from all over the country arose a cry of alarm. Father
was branded as a nihilist and an anarchist, and in one
cartoon that was copied widely he was portrayed wav-
ing a red flag at the head of a mob of long-haired, wild-
eyed men who bore in their hands torches, knives,
and dynamite bombs.
He was assailed terribly in the press, in long and
abusive editorials, for his anarchy, and hints were
made of mental breakdown on his part. This be-
havior, on the part of the capitalist press, was nothing
,^new, Ernest told us. It^ was the custom, he said, to,,
-jsend reporters to all the socialist meetings for^ the ex-
press purpose of misreporting and distorting wliaJb .was
said, in order to frighten the middle class away from
any possible affiliation with the proletariat. And re-
peatedly Ernest warned father to cease fighting and
to take to cover.
The socialist press of the country took up the fight,
however, and throughout the reading portion of the
working class it was known that the book had been
suppressed. But this knowledge stopped with the
working class. Next, the "Appeal to Reason," a big
THE VORTEX 167
socialist publishing house, arranged with father to
bring out the book. Father was jubilant^ but Ernest
was alarmed.
''I tell you we are on the verge of the unknown,"
he insisted. ''Big things are happening secretly all
around us. We can feel them. We do not know what
they are, but they are there. The whole fabric of
society is a-tremble with them. Don't ask me. I
don't know myself. But out of this flux of society
something is about to crystallize. It is crystallizing
now. The suppression of the book is a precipitation.
How many books have been suppressed ? We haven't
the least idea. We are in the dark. We have no way
of learning. Watch out^xt for the suppression of the
socialist press and sociaUst publishing houses. I'm
afraid it's coming. We are going to be throttled."
Ernest had his hand on the pulse of events even
more closely than the rest of the socialists, and within
two days the first blow was struck. The Appeal to
Reason was a weekly, and its regular circulation
amongst the proletariat was seven huiidred and fifty
thousand. Also, it very frequently got out special
editions of from two to five millions. These great
editions were paid for and distributed by the small
army of voluntary workers who had marshalled around
the Appeal. The first blow was aimed at these
special editions, and it was a crushing one. By an
arbitrary ruling of the Post Ofl&ce, these editions were
168 THE IRON HEEL
decided to be not the regular circulation of the paper,
and for that reason were denied admission to the mails.
A week later the Post Office Department ruled that
the paper was seditious, and barred it entirely from
the mails. This was a fearful blow to the socialist
propaganda. The Appeal was desperate. It de-
vised a plan of reaching its subscribers through the
express companies, but they declined to handle it.
This was the end of the Appeal. But not quite.
It prepared to go on with its book publishing. Twenty
thousand copies of father's book were in the bindery,
and the presses were turning off more. And then,
without warning, a mob arose one night, and, under a
waving American flag, singing patriotic songs, set fire
to the great plant of the Appeal and totally destroyed it.
Now Girard, Kansas, was a quiet, peaceable town.
There had never been any labor troubles there. The
Appeal paid union wages; and, in fact, was the
backbone of the town, giving employment to hundreds
of men and women. It was not the citizens of Girard
that composed the mob. This mob had risen up out
of the earth apparently, and to all intents and purposes,
its work done, it had gone back into the earth. Ernest
saw in the affair the most sinister import.
''The Black Hundreds ^ are being organized in the
United States," he said. ''This is the beginning.
1 The Black Hundreds were reactionary mobs organized by the
perishing Autocracy in the Russian Revolution. These reactionary
THE VORTEX 169
There will be more of it. The Iron Heel is getting
bold."
And so perished father's book. We were to see
much of the Black Hundreds as the days went by.
Week by week more of the socialist papers were barred
from the mails, and in a number of instances the Black
Hundreds destroyed the socialist presses. Of course,
the newspapers of the land lived up to the reactionary
policy of the ruling class, and the destroyed socialist
press was misrepresented and vilified, while the Black
Hundreds were represented as true patriots and saviours
of society. So convincing was all this misrepresenta-
tion that even sincere ministers in the pulpit praised
the Black Hundreds while regretting the necessity of
violence.
History was making fast. The fall elections were
soon to occur, and Ernest was nominated by the
socialist party to run for Congress. His chance for
election was most favorable. The street-car strike in
San Francisco had been broken. And following upon
it the teamsters' strike had been broken. These two
defeats had been very disastrous to organized labor.
The whole Water Front Federation, along with its
allies in the structural trades, had backed up the
teamsters, and all had smashed down ingloriously. It
groups attacked the revolutionary groups, and also, at needed mo-
ments, rioted and destroyed property so as to aflford the Autocracy
the pretext of calling out the Cossacks.
170 THE IRON HEEL
had been a bloody strike. The police had broken
countless heads with their riot clubs; and the death
list had been augmented by the turning loose of a
machine-gun on the strikers from the barns of the
Marsden Special Delivery Company.
In consequence, the men were sullen and vindictive.
They wanted blood, and revenge. Beaten on their
chosen field, they were ripe to seek revenge by means
of political action. They still maintained their labor
organization, and this gave them strength in the politi-
cal struggle that was on. Ernest's chance for election
grew stronger and stronger. Day by day unions and
more unions voted their support to the socialists, until
even Ernest laughed when the Undertakers' Assistants
and the Chicken Pickers fell into line. Labor became
mulish. While it packed the socialist meetings with
mad enthusiasm, it was impervious to the wiles of the
old-party politicians. The old-party orators were usu-
ally greeted with empty halls, though occasionally
they encountered full halls where they were so roughly
handled that more than once it was necessary to call
out the police reserves.
Histor}^ was making fast. The air was vibrant with
things happening and impending. The country was
on the verge of hard times,^ caused by a series of pros-
^ Under the capitalist r%ime these periods of hard times were as
inevitable as they were absurd. Prosperity always brought calamity.
This, of course, was due to the excess of unconsumed profits that was
piled up.
THE VORTEX 171
perous years wherein the difficulty of disposing abroad
of the iinconsumed surplus had become increasingly
difficult. Industries were working short time ; many
great factories were standing idle against the time
when the surplus should be gone ; and wages were being
cut right and left.
Also, the great machinist strike had been broken.
Two hundred thousand machinists, along with their
five hundred thousand allies in the metal-working
trades, had been defeated in as bloody a strike as had
ever marred the United States. Pitched battles had
been fought with the small armies of armed strike-
breakers ^ put in the field by the employers' associa-
tions ; the Black Hundreds, appearing in scores of
wide-scattered places, had destroyed property; and,
in consequence, a hundred thousand regular soldiers of
the United States had been called out to put a fright-
ful end to the whole affair. A number of the labor
* Strike-breakers — these ■were, in purpose and practice and every-
thing except name, the private soldiers of the capitahsts. They were
thoroughly organized and well armed, and they were held in readiness
to be hurled in special trains to any part of the country where labor
went out on strike or was locked out by the employers. Only those
curious times could have given rise to the amazing spectacle of one,
Farley, a notorious commander of strike-breakers, who, in 1906,
swept across the United States in special trains from New York to
San Francisco with an army of twenty-five hundred men, fully armed
and equipped, to break a strike of the San Francisco street-car men.
Such an act was in direct violation of the laws of the land. The
fact that this act, and thousands of similar acts, went unpunished,
goes to show how completely the judiciary was the creature of the
Plutocracy.
172 THE IRON HEEL
leaders had been executed; many others had been
sentenced to prison, while thousands of the rank and
file of the strikers had been herded into bull-pens ^
and abominably treated by the soldiers.
The years of prosperity were now to be paid for.
All markets were glutted; all markets were falling;
and amidst the general crumble of prices the price of
labor crumbled fastest of all. The land was convulsed
with industrial dissensions. Labor was striking here,
there, and everywhere ; and where it was not striking,
it was being turned out by the capitalists. The papers
were filled with tales of violence and blood. And
through it all the Black Hundreds played their part.
Riot, arson, and wanton destruction of property was
their function, and well they performed it. The
whole regular army was in the field, called there by
the actions of the Black Hundreds.^ All cities and
* Bull-pen — in a miners' strike in Idaho, in the latter part of the
nineteenth century, it happened that many of the strikers were con-
fined in a bull-pen by the troops. The practice and the name con-
tinued in the twentieth century.
^ The name only, and not the idea, was imported from Russia.
The Black Hundreds were a development out of the secret agents of
the capitalists, and their use arose in the labor struggles of the nine-
teenth century. There is no discussion of this. No less an authority
of the times than Carroll D. Wright, United States Commissioner of
Labor, is responsible for the statement. From his book, entitled
"The Battles of Labor," is quoted the declaration that "in some
of the great historic strikes the employers themselves have instigated acts
of violence;" that manufacturers have deliberatelj^ provoked strikes
in order to get rid of surplus stock; and that freight cars have been
burned by employers' agents during railroad strikes in order to increase
THE VORTEX 173
towns were like armed camps, and laborers were shot
down like dogs. Out of the vast army of the unem-
ployed the strike-breakers were recruited ; and when
the strike-breakers were worsted by the labor unions,
the troops always appeared and crushed the unions.
Then there was the militia. As yet, it was not neces-
sary to have recourse to the secret militia law. Only
the regularly organized militia was out, and it was out
everywhere. And in this time of terror, the regular
army was increased an additional hundred thousand
by the government.
Never had labor received such an all-around beating.
The great captains of industry, the oUgarchs, had for
the first time thrown their full weight into the breach
the struggling employers' associations had made.
These associations were practically middle-class affairs,
and now, compelled by hard times and crashing mar-
kets, and aided by the great captains of industry, they
gave organized labor an awful and decisive defeat.
It was an all-powerful alliance, but it was an alliance;
of the lion and the lamb, as the middle class was soon
to learn.
Labor was bloody and sullen, but crushed. Yet
its defeat did not put an end to the hard times. The
banks, themselves constituting one of the most im-
disorder. It was out of these secret agents of the employers that the
Black Hundreds arose; and it was they, in turn, that later became
that terrible weapon of the Oligarchy, the agents-provocateurs.
174 THE IRON HEEL
portant forces of the Oligarchy, continued to call in
credits. The Wall Street ^ group turned the stock
market into a maelstrom where the values of all the
land crumbled away almost to nothingness. And out
of all the rack and ruin rose the form of the nascent
Oligarchy, imperturbable, indifferent, and sure. Its
serenity and certitude was terrifjdng. Not only did
it use its own vast power, but it used all the power of
the United States Treasury to carry out its plans.
The captains of industry had turned upon the middle
class. The employers' associations, that had helped
the captains of industry to tear and rend labor, were
now torn and rent by their quondam allies. Amidst
the crashing of the middle men, the small business men
and manufacturers, the trusts stood firm. Nay, the
trusts did more than stand firm. They were active.
They sowed wind, and wind, and ever more wind;
for they alone knew how to reap the whirlwind and
make a profit out of it. And such profits ! Colossal
profits ! Strong enough themselves to weather the
storm that was largely their own brewing, they turned
loose and plundered the wrecks that floated about
them. Values were pitifully and inconceivably
shrunken, and the trusts added hugely to their hold-
ings, even extending their enterprises into many new
^ Wall Street — so named from a street in ancient New York, where
was situated the stock exchange, and where the irrational organization
of society permitted underhanded manipulation of all the industries
of the country.
THE VORTEX 175
fields — and always at the expense of the middle
class.
Thus the summer of 1912 witnessed the virtual death-
thrust to the middle class. Even Ernest was astounded
at the quickness with which it had been done. He
shook his head ominously and looked forward without
hope to the fall elections.
''It's no use/' he said. ''We are beaten. The Iron
Heel is here. I had hoped for a peaceable victory at
the ballot-box. I was wrong. Wickson was right.
We shall be robbed of our few remaining liberties ; the
Iron Heel will walk upon our faces; nothing remains
but a bloody revolution of the working class. Of
course we will win, but I shudder to think of it."
And from then on Ernest pinned his faith in revo-
lution. In this he was in advance of his party. His
fellow-socialists could not agree with him. They still
insisted that victory could be gained through the elec-
tions. It was not that they were stunned. They were
too cool-headed and courageous for that. They were
merely incredulous, that was all. Ernest could not get
them seriously to fear the coming of the Oligarchy.
They were stirred by him, but they were too sure of
their own strength. There was no room in their
theoretical social evolution for an oligarchy, therefore
the Oligarchy could not be.
"We'll send you to Congress and it will be all right,"
they told him at one of our secret meetings.
176 THE IRON PIEEL
''And when they take me out of Congress," Ernest
replied coldly, "and put me against a wall, and blow
my brains out — what then ?"
''Then we'll rise in our might," a dozen voices
answered at once.
"Then you'll welter in your gore," was his retort.
"I've heard that song sung by the middle class, and
where is it now in its might?"
CHAPTER XI
THE GREAT ADVENTURE
Mr. Wickson did not send for father. They met
by chance on the ferry-boat to San Francisco, so that
the warning he gave father was not premeditated.
Had they not met accidentally, there would not have
been any warning. Not that the outcome would have
been different, however. Father came of stout old
Mayflower ^ stock, and the blood was imperative in
him.
''Ernest was right," he told me, as soon as he had
returned home. ''Ernest is a very remarkable young
man, and I'd rather see you his wife than the wife of
Rockefeller himself or the King of England."
"What's the matter?" I asked in alarm.
"The Oligarchy is about to tread upon our faces —
yours and mine. Wickson as much as told me so.
He was very kind — for an oligarch. He offered to
reinstate me in the university. What do you think
of that? He, Wickson, a sordid money-grabber, has
* One of the first ships that carried colonies to America, after the
discovery of the New World. Descendants of these original colonists
were for a while inordinately proud of their genealogy ; but in time the
blood became so widely diffused that it ran in the veins practically
of all Americans.
N 177
178 THE IRON HEEL
the power to determine whether I shall or shall not
teach in the university of the state. But he offered
me even better than that — offered to make me presi-
dent of some great college of physical sciences that is
being planned — the Oligarchy must get rid of its
surplus somehow, you see.
" 'Do you remember what I told that socialist lover
of your daughter's?' he said. 'I told him that we
would walk upon the faces of the working class. And
so we shall. As for you, I have for you a deep respect
as a scientist ; but if you throw your fortunes in with
the working class — well, watch out for your face, that
is all.' And then he turned and left me."
''It means v/e'U have to marry earlier than you
planned," was Ernest's comment when we told him.
I could not follow his reasoning, but I was soon to
learn it. It was at this time that the quarterly divi-
dend of the Sierra Mills was paid — or, rather, should
have been paid, for father did not receive his. After
waiting several days, father wrote to the secretary.
Promptly came the reply that there was no record on
the books of father's owning any stock, and a polite
request for more explicit information.
"I'll make it explicit enough, confound him," father
declared, and departed for the bank to get the stock
in question from his safe-deposit box.
"Ernest is a very remarkable man," he said when
he got back and while I was helping him off with his
THE GREAT ADVENTURE 179
overcoat. ''I repeat, my daughter, that young man
of yours is a very remarkable young man."
I had learned, whenever he praised Ernest in such
fashion, to expect disaster.
''They have already walked upon my face," father
explained. ''There was no stock. The box was empty.
You and Ernest will have to get married pretty
quickl3\" ^_^
Father insisted on laboratory methods. He brought
the Sierra Mills into court, but he could not bring the
books of the Sierra Mills into court. He did not con-
trol the courts, and the Sierra Mills did. That explained
it all. He was thoroughly beaten by the law, and the
bare-faced robbery held good.
It is almost laughable now, when I look back on it,
the way father was beaten. He met Wickson acci-
dentally on the street in San Francisco, and he told
Wickson that he was a damned scoundrel. And then
father was arrested for attempted assault, fined in the
police court, and bound over to keep the peace. It
was all so ridiculous that when he got home he had to
laugh himself. But what a furor was raised in the
local papers ! There was grave talk about the bacillus
of violence that infected all men who embraced social-
ism; and father, with his long and peaceful life, was
instanced as a shining example of how the bacillus of
violence worked. Also, it was asserted by more than
one paper that father's mind had weakened under the
180 THE IRON HEEL
strain of scientific study, and confinement in a state
asylum for the insane was suggested. Nor was this
merely talk. It was an imminent peril. But father
was wise enough to see it. He had the Bishop's ex-
perience to lesson from, and he lessoned well. He kept
quiet no matter what injustice was perpetrated on
him, and really, I think, surprised his enemies.
There was the matter of the house — our home. A
mortgage was foreclosed on it, and we had to give up
possession. Of course there wasn't any mortgage, and
never had been any mortgage. The ground had been
bought outright, and the house had been paid for when
it was built. And house and lot had alwa3"S been free
and unencumbered. Nevertheless there was the mort-
gage, properly and legally drawn up and signed, with
a record of the payments of interest through a number
of years. Father made no outcry. As he had been
robbed of his money, so was he now robbed of his
home. And he had no recourse. The machinery of
society was in the hands of those who were bent on
breaking him. He was a philosopher at heart, and he
was no longer even angry.
"I am doomed to be broken," he said to me; ''but
that is no reason that I should not try to be shattered
as little as possible. These old bones of mine are
fragile, and I've learned my lesson. God knows
I don't want to spend my last days in an insane
THE GREAT ADVENTURE 181
Which reminds me of Bishop Morehouse, whom
I have neglected for many pages. But first let me tell
of my marriage. In the pla}'' of events, my marriage
sinks into insignificance, I know, so I shall barely
mention it.
''Now we shall become real proletarians," father said,
when we were driven from our home. "I have often
envied that young man of yours for his actual knowl-
edge of the proletariat. Now I shall see and learn for
myself."
Father paust have had strong in him the blood of
adventure. He looked upon our catastrophe in the
light of an adventure. No anger nor bitterness pos-
sessed him. He w^as too philosophic and simple to
be vindictive, and he lived too much in the world of
mind to miss the creature comforts we were giving up.
So it was, when we moved to San Francisco into four
wretched rooms in the slum south of Market Street,
that he embarked upon the adventure with the joy
and enthusiasm of a child — combined with the clear
sight and mental grasp of an extraordinary intellect.
He really never crystallized mentally. He had no
false sense of values. Conventional or habitual values
meant nothing to him. The only values he recognized
were mathematical and scientific facts. My father
was a great man. He had the mind and the soul that
only great men have. In ways he was even greater
than Ernest, than whom I have known none greater.
182 THE IRON HEEL
Even I found some relief in our change of living. If
nothing else, I was escaping from the organized ostra-
cism that had been our increasing portion in the uni-
versity town ever since the enmity of the nascent
Oligarchy had been incurred. And the change was to
me likewise adventure, and the greatest of all, for it
was love-adventure. The change in our fortunes had
hastened my marriage, and it w^as as a wife that I
came to live in the four rooms on Pell Street, in the San
Francisco slum.
And this out of all remains: I made Ernest happy.
I came into his stormy life, not as a new perturbing
force, but as one that made toward peace and repose.
I gave him rest. It was the guerdon of my love for
him. It was the one infallible token that I had not
failed. To bring forgetfulness, or the light of glad-
ness, into those poor tired eyes of his — what greater
joy could have blessed me than that?
Those dear tired eyes. He toiled as few men ever
toiled, and all his lifetime he toiled for others. That
was the measure of his manhood. He was a humanist
and a lover. And he, with his incarnate spirit of bat-
tle, his gladiator body and his eagle spirit — he was as
gentle and tender to me as a poet. He was a poet. A
singer in deeds. And all his life he sang the song of
man. And he did it out of sheer love of man, and for
man he gave his life and was crucified.
And all this he did with no hope of future reward.
THE GREAT ADVENTURE 183
In his conception of things there was no future life.
He, who fairly burnt with immortality, denied him-
self immortality — such was the paradox of him. He,
so warm in spirit, was dominated by that cold and for-
bidding philosophy, materialistic monism. I used to
refute him by telling him that I measured his immor-
tality by the wings of his soul, and that I should have
to live endless seons in order to achieve the full meas-
urement. Whereat he would laugh, and his arms
would leap out to me, and he would call me his sweet
metaphysician; and the tiredness w^ould pass out of
his eyes, and into them would flood the happy love-
light that was in itself a new and sufficient advertise-
ment of his immortality.
Also, he used to call me his dualist, and he would
explain how Kant, by means of pure reason, had
abolished reason, in order to worship God. And he
drew the parallel and included me guilty of a similar
act. And when I pleaded guilty, but defended the
act as highly rational, he but pressed me closer and
laughed as only one of God's own lovers could laugh.
I was Vv'ont to deny that heredity and environment
could explain his own originality and genius, any
more than could the cold groping finger of science
catch and analyze and classify that elusive essence
that lurked in the constitution of life itself.
I held that space was an apparition of God, and that
soul was a projection of the character of God ; and when
184 THE IRON HEEL
he called me his sweet metaphysician, I called him
my immortal materialist. And so we loved and were
happy ; and I forgave him his materialism because of
his tremendous work in the world, performed without
thought of soul-gain thereby, and because of his so ex-
ceeding modesty of spirit that prevented him from hav-
ing pride and regal consciousness of himself and his soul.
But he had pride. How could he have been an eagle
and not have pride? His contention was that it was
finer for a finite mortal speck of life to feel Godlike,
than for a god to feel godlike ; and so it was that he
exalted what he deemed his mortality. He was fond of
quoting a fragment from a certain poem. He had never
seen the whole poem, and he had tried vainly to learn
its authorship. I here give the fragment, not alone
because he loved it, but because it epitomized the para-
dox that he was in the spirit of him, and his conception of
his spirit. For how can a man, with thrilling, and burn-
ing, and exaltation, recite the following and still be
mere mortal earth, a bit of fugitive force, an evanescent
form ? Here it is :
"Joy upon joy and gain upon gain
Are the destined rights of my birth,
And I shout the praise of my endless days
To the echoing edge of the earth.
Though I suffer all deaths that a man can die
To the uttermost end of time,
I have deep-drained this, my cup of bliss,
In every age and clime —
THE GREAT ADVENTURE 185
The froth of Pride, the tang of Power,
The sweet of Womanhood !
I drain the lees upon my knees,
For oh, the draught is good ;
I drink to Life, I drink to Death,
And smack my lips with song.
For when I die, another ' I ' shall pass the cup along.
" The man you drove from Eden's grove
Was I, my Lord, was I,
And I shall be there when the earth and the air
Are rent from sea to sky ;
For it is my world, my gorgeous world,
The world of my dearest woes.
From the first faint cry of the newborn
To the rack of the woman's throes.
"Packed with the pulse of an unborn race.
Torn with a world's desire.
The surging flood of my wild young blood
Would quench the judgment fire.
I am Man, Man, Man, from the tingling flesh
To the dust of my earthly goal,
From the nestling gloom of the pregnant womb
To the sheen of my naked soul.
Bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh
The whole world leaps to my will,
And the unslaked thirst of an Eden cursed
Shall harrow the earth for its fill.
Almighty God, when I drain life's glass
Of all its rainbow gleams.
The hapless plight of eternal night
Shall be none too long for my dreams.
" The man you drove from Eden's grove
Was I, my Lord, was I,
186 THE IRON HEEL
' And I shall be there when the earth and the air
Are rent from sea to sky ;
For it is my world, my gorgeous world,
The world of my dear delight.
From the brightest gleam of the Arctic stream
To the dusk of my own love-night."
Ernest always overworked. His wonderful con-
stitution kept him up ; but even that constitution
could not keep the tired look out of his eyes. His
dear, tired eyes ! He never slept more than four
and one-half hours a night ; yet he never found
time to do all the work he wanted to do. He never
ceased from his activities as a propagandist, and was
always scheduled long in advance for lectures to work-
ingmen's organizations. Then there was the campaign.
He did a man's full work in that alone. With the sup-
pression of the socialist publishing houses, his meagre
royalties ceased, and he was hard-put to make a living ;
for he had to make a living in addition to all his other
labor. He did a great deal of translating for the maga-
zines on scientific and philosophic subjects ; and, com-
ing home late at night, worn out from the strain of
the campaign, he would plunge into his translating and
toil on well into the morning hours. And in addition to
everything, there was his studying. To the day of his
death he kept up his studies, and he studied prodi-
giously.
189
THE GREAT ADVENTURE
normal,/
And yet he found time in which to love me and i^iety."^
me happy. But this was accompHshed only through n As
merging my life completely into his. I learned short- 1^
hand and typewriting, and became his secretary. He
insisted that I succeeded in cutting his workin half ; and
so it was that I schooled myself to understand his work.
Our interests became mutual, and we worked together
and played together.
And then there were our sweet stolen moments in the
midst of our work — just a word, or caress, or flash of
love-light ; and our moments were sweeter for being
stolen. For we lived on the heights, where the air was
keen and sparkling, where the toil was for humanity,
and where sordidness and selfishness never entered.
We loved love, and our love was never smirched by
anything less than the best. And this out of all re-
mains : I did not fail. I gave him rest — he who
worked so hard for others, my dear, tired-eyed mor-
talist.
186
CHAPTER XII
THE BISHOP
It was after my marriage that I chanced upon Bishop
Morehouse. But I must give the events in their proper
sequence. After his outbreak at the I. P. H. Con-
vention, the Bishop, being a gentle soul, ha^ yielded
to the friendly pressure brought to bear upon him, and
had gone away on a vacation. But he returned more
fixed than ever in his determination to preach the
message of the Church. • To the consternation of his
congregation, his first sermon was quite similar to the
address he had given before the Convention. Again he
(said, and at length and with distressing detail, that the
Church had wandered away from the Master's teaching,
and that Mammon had been instated in the place of
Christ.
I And the result was, willy-nilly, that he was led away
Ito a private sanitarium for mental disease, while in the
; newspapers appeared pathetic accounts of his mental
U^reakdown and of the saintliness of his character. He
was held a prisoner in the sanitarium. I called re-
peatedly, but was denied access to him; and I was"
188
THE BISHOP 189
terribly impressed by the tragedy of a sane, normal,/
saintly man being crushed by the brutal will of society.
For the Bishop was sane, and pure, and noble. As
Ernest said, all that was the matter with him was that
he had incorrect notions of biology and sociology, and
because of his incorrect notions he had not gone about
it in the right way to rectify matters.
What terrified me was the Bishop's helplessness. If i
he persisted in the truth as he saw it, he was doomed to :
an insane ward. And he could do nothing. His money, L
his position, his culture, could not save him. His views/
were perilous to society, and society could not conceive/
that such perilous views could be the product of a sane
mind. Or, at least, it seems to me that such was
society's attitude.
But the Bishop, in spite of the gentleness and purity
of his spirit, was possessed of guile. He apprehended
clearly his danger. He saw himself caught in the web,
and he tried to escape from it. Denied help from his
friends, such as father and Ernest and I could have given,
he was left to battle for himself alone. And in the en-
forced solitude of the sanitarium he recovered. He
became again sane. His eyes ceased to see visions ; his
brain was purged of the fancy that it was the duty of
society to feed the Master's lambs.
As I say, he became well, quite well, and the news-
papers and the church people hailed his return with
joy. I went once to his church. The sermon was of
190 THE IRON HEEL
the same order as the ones he had preached long before
his eyes had seen visions. I was disappointed, shocked.
Had society then beaten him into submission? Was
he a coward? Had he been bulldozed into recanting?
Or had the strain been too great for him, and had he
meekly surrendered to the Juggernaut of the estab-
lished ?
I called upon him in his beautiful home. He was
wofully changed. He was thinner, and there were lines
on his face which I had never seen before. He was
manifestly distressed by my coming. He plucked ner-
vously at his sleeve as we talked ; and his eyes were
restless, fluttering here, there, and everywhere, and
refusing to meet mine. His mind seemed preoccupied,
and there were strange pauses in his conversation,
abrupt changes of topic, and an inconsecutiveness that
was bewildering. Could this, then, be the firm-poised,
Christlike man I had known, with pure, limpid eyes
and a gaze steady and unfaltering as his soul ? He had
been man-handled ; he had been cowed into subjection.
His spirit was too gentle. It had not been mighty
enough to face the organized wolf-pack of society.
I felt sad, unutterably sad. He talked ambigu-
ously, and was so apprehensive of what I might say
that I had not the heart to catechise him. He spoke
in a far-away manner of his illness, and we talked dis-
jointedly about the church, the alternations in the
organ, and about petty charities ; and he saw me depart
THE BISHOP 191
with such evident reUef that I should have laughed had
not my heart been so full of tears.
The poor little hero ! If I had only known ! He was
battling like a giant, and I did not guess it. Alone,
all alone, in the midst of millions of his fellow-men, he
was fighting his fight. Torn by his horror of the asylum
and his fidelity to truth and the right, he clung stead-
fastly to truth and the right ; but so alone was he that
he did not dare to trust even me. He had learned his
lesson well — too well.
But I was soon to know. One day the Bishop dis-
appeared. He had told nobody that he was going
away; and as the days went by and he did not re-
appear, there was much gossip to the effect that he had
committed suicide while temporarily deranged. But
this idea was dispelled when it was learned that he had
sold all his possessions, — his city mansion, his country
house at Menlo Park, his paintings, and collections, and
even his cherished library. It was patent that he had
made a clean and secret sweep of everything before he
disappeared.
This happened during the time when calamity had
overtaken us in our own affairs ; and it was not till we
were well settled in our new home that we had op-
portunity really to wonder and speculate about the
Bishop's doings. And then, everything was suddenly
made clear. Early one evening, while it was yet twi-
light, I had run across the street and into the butcher-
192 THE IRON HEEL
shop to get some chops for Ernest's supper. We called
the last meal of the day "supper" in our new environ-
ment.
Just at the moment I came out of the butcher-shop,
a man emerged from the corner grocery that stood
alongside. A queer sense of famiharity made me look
again. But the man had turned and was walking
rapidly away. There was something about the slope of
the shoulders and the fringe of silver hair between coat
collar and slouch hat that aroused vague memories.
Instead of crossing the street, I hurried after the man.
I quickened my pace, trying not to think the thoughts
that formed unbidden in my brain. No, it was impos-
sible. It could not be — not in those faded overalls,
too long in the legs and frayed at the bottoms.
I paused, laughed at myself, and almost abandoned
the chase. But the haunting familiarity of those
shoulders and that silver hair! Again I hurried on.
As I passed him, I shot a keen look at his face ; then I
whirled around abruptly and confronted — the Bishop.
He halted with equal abruptness, and gasped. A
large paper bag in his right hand fell to the sidewalk.
It burst, and about his feet and mine bounced and
rolled a flood of potatoes. He looked at me with sur-
prise and alarm, then he seemed to wilt away; the
shoulders drooped with dejection, and he uttered a deep
sigh.
I held out my hand. He shook it, but his hand felt
THE BISHOP 193
clammy. He cleared his throat in embarrassment, and
I could see the sweat starting out on his forehead. It
was evident that he was badly frightened.
"The potatoes," he murmured faintly. "They are
precious."
Between us we picked them up and replaced them in
the broken bag, which he now held carefully in the hol-
low of his arm. I tried to tell him my gladness at
meeting him and that he must come right home with
me.
"Father will be rejoiced to see you," I said. "We
live only a stone's throw away."
"I can't," he said, "I must be going. Good-by."
He looked apprehensively about him, as though
dreading discovery, and made an attempt to walk on.
"Tell me where you live, and I shall call later," he
said, when he saw that I walked beside him and that
it was my intention to stick to him now that he was
found.
"No," I answered firmly. "You must come now."
He looked at the potatoes spilling on his arm, and at
the small parcels on his other arm.
"Really, it is impossible," he said. "Forgive me for
my rudeness. If you only knew."
He looked as if he were going to break down, but the
next moment he had himself in control.
"Besides, this food," he went on. "It is a sad case.
It is terrible. She is an old woman. I must take it to
o
194 THE IRON HEEL
her at once. She is suffering from want of it. I must
go at once. You understand. Then I will return. I
promise 5^ou."
''Let me go with you," I volunteered. ''Is it far?"
He sighed again, and surrendered.
"Only two blocks," he said. "Let us hasten."
Under the Bishop's guidance I learned something
of my own neighborhood. I had not dreamed such
wretchedness and misery existed in it. Of course,
this was because I did not concern myself with charity.
I had become convinced that Ernest w^as right when
he sneered at charity as a poulticing of an ulcer.
Remove the ulcer, was his remedy; give to the worker
his product ; pension as soldiers those who grow honor-
ably old in their toil, and there will be no need for
charity. Convinced of this, I toiled with him at the
revolution, and did not exhaust my energy in alle-
viating the social ills that continuously arose from the
injustice of the system.
I followed the Bishop into a small room, ten by
twelve, in a rear tenement. And there we found a
little old German woman — sixty-four years old, the
Bishop said. She was surprised at seeing me, but
she nodded a pleasant greeting and went on sewing on
the pair of men's trousers in her lap. Beside her, on
the floor, was a pile of trousers. The Bishop dis-
covered there was neither coal nor kindling, and went
out to buy some.
THE BISHOP 195
I took up a pair of trousers and examined her work.
"Six cents, lady," she said, nodding her head gently
while she went on stitching. She stitched slowly, but
never did she cease from stitching. She seemed mas-
tered by the verb "to stitch."
'^For all that work?" I asked. ''Is that what they
pay? How long does it take you?"
"Yes," she answered, "that is what they pay. Six
cents for finishing. Two hours' sewing on each pair.
"But the boss doesn't know that," she added quickly,
betraying a fear of getting him into trouble. "I'm
slow. I've got the rheumatism in my hands. Girls
work much faster. They finish in half that time. The
boss is kind. He lets me take the work home, now
that I am old and the noise of the machine bothers my
head. If it wasn't for his kindness, I'd starve.
"Yes, those who work in the shop get eight cents.
But what can you do? There is not enough work for
the young. The old have no chance. Often one pair
is all I can get. Sometimes, like to-day, I am given
eight pair to finish before night."
I asked her the hours she worked, and she said it
depended on the season.
"In the summer, when there is a rush order, I work
from five in the morning to nine at night. But in the
winter it is too cold. The hands do not early get over
the stiffness. Then you must work later — till after
midnight sometimes.
196 THE IRON HEEL
''Yes, it has been a bad summer. The hard times.
God must be angry. This is the j&rst work the boss
has given me in a week. It is true, one cannot eat
much when there is no work. I am used to it. I have
sewed all my life, in the old country and here in San
Francisco — thirty-three years.
''If you are sure of the rent, it is all right. The
houseman is very kind, but he must have his rent.
It is fair. He only charges three dollars for this room.
That is cheap. But it is not easy for you to find all of
three dollars every month."
She ceased talking, and, nodding her head, went on
stitching.
"You have to be very careful as to how you spend
your earnings," I suggested.
She nodded emphatically.
"After the rent it's not so bad. Of course you can't
buy meat. And there is no milk for the coffee. But
always there is one meal a day, and often two."
She said this last proudly. There was a smack of
success in her words. But as she stitched on in silence,
I noticed the sadness in her pleasant eyes and the droop
of her mouth. The look in her eyes became far away.
She rubbed the dimness hastily out of them ; it inter-
fered with her stitching.
p "No, it is not the hunger that makes the heart
ache," she explained. "You get used to being hun-
gry. It is for my child that I cry. It was the machine
THE BISHOP 197
that killed her. It is true she worked hard, but I
cannot understand. She was strong. And she was
young — only forty ; and she worked only thirty years.
She began young, it is true; but my man died. The
boiler exploded down at the works. And what were
we to do ? She was ten, but she was very strong. But
the machine killed her. Yes, it did. It killed her, and
she was the fastest worker in the shop. I have thought
about it often, and I know. That is why I cannot work
in the shop. The machine bothers my head. Always
I hear it saying, 'I did it, I did it.' And it says that
all day long. And then I think of my daughter, and I
i cannot work."
The moistness was in her old eyes again, and
she had to wipe it away before she could go on
stitching.
I heard the Bishop stumbling up the stairs, and I
opened the door. What a spectacle he was. On his
back he carried half a sack of coal, with kindling on
top. Some of the coal dust had coated his face, and
the sweat from his exertions was running in streaks.
He dropped his burden in the corner by the stove and
wiped his face on a coarse bandana handkerchief. I
could scarcely accept the verdict of my senses. The
Bishop, black as a coal-heaver, in a workingman's
cheap cotton shirt (one button was missing from the
throat), and in overalls ! That was the most incongru-
ous of all — the overalls, frayed at the bottoms, dragged
198 THE IRON HEEL
down at the heels, and held up by a narrow leather belt
around the hips such as laborers wear.
Though the Bishop was warm, the poor swollen
hands of the old woman were already cramping with
the cold ; and before we left her, the Bishop had built
the fire, while I had peeled the potatoes and put them
on to boil. I was to learn, as time went by, that there
were many cases similar to hers, and many worse,
hidden away in the monstrous depths of the tenements
in my neighborhood.
We got back to find Ernest alarmed by my absence.
After the first surprise of greeting was over, the Bishop
leaned back in his chair, stretched out his overall-
covered legs, and actually sighed a comfortable sigh.
We were the first of his old friends he had met since
his disappearance, he told us; and during the inter-
vening weeks he must have suffered greatly from
loneliness. He told us much, though he told us more
of the joy he had experienced in doing the Master's
bidding.
''For truly now," he said, ''I am feeding his lambs.
And I have learned a great lesson. The soul cannot be
ministered to till the stomach is appeased. His lambs
must be fed bread and butter and potatoes and meat ;
after that, and only after that, are their spirits ready
for more refined nourishment."
He ate heartily of the supper I cooked. Never had
he had such an appetite at our table in the old days.
THE BISHOP 199
We spoke of it, and he said that he had never been so
healthy in his Hfe.
"I walk always now," he said, and a blush was on his
cheek at the thought of the time when he rode in his
carriage, as though it were a sin not lightly to be laid.
''My health is better for it," he added hastily.
''And I am very happy — indeed, most happy. At
last I am a consecrated spirit."
And yet there was in his face a permanent pain, the
pain of the world that he was now taking to himself.
He was seeing life in the raw, and it was a different life
from what he had known within the printed books of
his library.
"And you are responsible for all this, young man,"
he said directly to Ernest.
Ernest was embarrassed and awkward.
"I — I warned you," he faltered.
"No, you misunderstand," the Bishop answered.
"I speak not in reproach, but in gratitude. I have you
to thank for showing me my path. You led me from
theories about Hfe to life itself. You pulled aside the
veils from the social shams. You were light in my
darkness, but now I, too, see the light. And I am very
happy, only ..." he hesitated painfully, and in his
eyes fear leaped large. " Only the persecution. I harm
no one. Why will they not let me alone? But it is
not that. It is the nature of the persecution. I
shouldn't mind if they cut m.y flesh v/ith stripes, or
200 THE IRON HEEL
burned me at the stake, or crucified me head-down-
ward. But it is the as3dum that frightens me. Think
of it ! Of me — in an asyhim for the insane ! It is
revolting. I saw some of the cases at the sanitarium.
They were violent. My blood chills when I think of it.
And to be imprisoned for the rest of my life amid
scenes of screaming madness ! No ! no ! Not that !
Not that!"
It was pitiful. His hands shook, his whole body
quivered and shrank away from the picture he had
conjured. But the next moment he was calm.
"Forgive me," he said simply. "It is my wretched
nerves. And if the Master's work leads there, so be
it. Who am I to complain?"
I felt like crying aloud as I looked at him: "Great
Bishop ! 0 hero ! God's hero !"
A^^cr^he evening wore on we learned more of his
doings.
"I sold my house — my houses, rather," he said, "and
all my other possessions. I knew I must do it secretly,
else they would have taken everything away from me.
That would have been terrible. I often marvel these
days at the immense quantity of potatoes two or three
hundred thousand dollars will buy, or bread, or meat,
or coal and kindling." He turned to Ernest. "You
are right, young man. Labor is dreadfully underpaid.
I never did a bit of work in my life, except to appeal
aesthetically to Pharisees — I thought I was preaching
THE BISHOP 201
the message — and yet I was worth half a million
dollars. I never knew what half a million dollars
meant until I realized how much potatoes and bread
and butter and meat it could buy. And then I realized
something more. I realized that all those potatoes and
that bread and butter and meat were mine, and that I
had not worked to make them. Then it was clear to
me, some one else had worked and made them and been
robbed of them. And when I came down amongst
the poor I found those who had been robbed and who
were hungry and wretched because they had been
robbed."
We drew him back to his narrative.
''The money? I have it deposited in many different
banks under different names. It can never be taken
away from me, because it can never be found. And it
is so good, that money. It buys so much food. I never
knew before what money was good for."
''I wish we could get some of it for the propaganda,"
Ernest said wistfully. ''It would do immense good."
"Do you think so?" the Bishop said. "I do not
have much faith in politics. In fact, I am afraid I do
not understand politics."
Ernest was delicate in such matters. He did not
repeat his suggestion, though he knew only too well
the sore straits the Socialist Party was in through lack
of money.
"I sleep in cheap lodging houses," the Bishop went
202 THE IRON HEEL
on. ''But I am afraid, and I never stay long in one
place. Also, I rent two rooms in workingmen's houses
in different quarters of the city. It is a great extrava-
gance, I know, but it is necessary. I make up for it in
part by doing my own cooking, though sometimes I get
something to eat in cheap coffee-houses. And I have
made a discovery. Tamales ^ are very good when the
air grows chilly late at night. Only they are so expen-
sive. But I have discovered a place where I can get
three for ten cents. They are not so good as the others,
but they are very warming.
''And so I have at last found my work in the world,
thanks to you, young man. It is the Master's work."
He looked at me, and his eyes twinkled. "You caught
me feeding his lambs, you know. And of course you
will all keep my secret."
He spoke carelessly enough, but there was real fear
'. behind the speech. He promised to call upon us again.
\But a week later we read in the newspaper of the sad
-case of Bishop Morehouse, who had been committed to
;the Napa Asylum and for whom there were still hopes
, ';held out. In vain we tried to see him, to have his case
Reconsidered or investigated. Nor could we learn
i
Anything about him except the reiterated statements
jthat slight hopes were still held for his recovery.
' A Mexican dish, referred to occasionally in the literature of the
times. It is supposed that it was warmly seasoned. No recipe of it
has come down to us.
THE BISHOP 203
''Christ told the rich young man to sell all he had/'
Ernest said bitterly. ''The Bishop obeyed Christ's •
injunction and got locked up in a madhouse. Times ;
have changed since Christ's day. A rich man to-day f
who gives all he has to the poor is crazy. There is ^
o discussion. Society has spoken."
CHAPTER XIII
THE GENERAL STRIKE
Of course Ernest was elected to Congress in the great
socialist landslide that took place in the fall of 1912.
One great factor that helped to swell the socialist vote
was the destruction of Hearst/ This the Plutocracy
found an easy task. It cost Hearst eighteen million
dollars a year to run his various papers, and this sum,
and more, he got back from the middle class in pay-
ment for advertising. The source of his financial
strength lay wholly in the middle class. The trusts
did not advertise.^ To destroy Hearst, all that was
necessary was to take away from him his advertising.
The whole middle class had not yet been extermi-
^ William Randolph Hearst — a young Caiifornia millionaire who
became the most powerful newspaper OTvner in the country. His
newspapers were published in all the large cities, and they appealed
to the perishing middle class and to the proletariat. So large was
his following that he managed to take possession of the empty shell
of the old Democratic Party. He occupied an anomalous position,
preaching an emasculated socialism combined with a nondescript
sort of petty bourgeois capitalism. It was oil and water, and there
was no hope for him, though for a short period he was a source of
serious apprehension to the Plutocrats.
^ The cost of advertising was amazing in those helter-skelter times.
Only the small capitalists competed, and therefore they did the ad-
vertising. There being no competition where there was a trust, there
was no need for the trusts to advertise.
204
THE GENERAL STRIKE 205
nated. The sturdy skeleton of it remained; but it
was without power. The small manufacturers and
small business men who still survived were at the com-
plete mercy of the Plutocracy. They had no economic
nor political souls of their own. When the fiat of the
Plutocracy went forth, they withdrew their advertise-
ments from the Hearst papers.
Hearst made a gallant fight. He brought his papers
out at a loss of a million and a half each month. He
continued to publish the advertisements for which he
no longer received pay. Again the fiat of the Plu-
tocracy went forth, and the small business men and
manufacturers swamped him with a flood of notices
that he must discontinue running their old advertise-
ments. Hearst persisted. Injunctions were served
on him. Still he persisted. He received six months'
imprisonment for contempt of court in disobeying the
injunctions, while he was bankrupted by countless
damage suits. He had no chance. The Plutocracy
had passed sentence on him. The courts were in the
hands of the Plutocracy to carry the sentence out.
And vnih Hearst crashed also to destruction the Demo-
cratic Party that he had so recently captured.
With the destruction of Hearst and the Democratic
Party, there were only two paths for his following to
take. One was into the Socialist Party; the other
was into the Republican Party. Then it was that we
socialists reaped the fruit of Hearst's pseudo-socialistic
206 THE IRON HEEL
preaching; for the great majority of his followers
came over to us.
The expropriation of the farmers that took place at
this time would also have swelled our vote had it not
been for the brief and futile rise of the Grange Party.
Ernest and the socialist leaders fought fiercely to cap-
ture the farmers; but the destruction of the socialist
press and publishing houses constituted too great a
handicap, while the mouth-to-mouth propaganda had
not yet been perfected. So it was that politicians
like Mr. Calvin, who were themselves farmers long since
expropriated, captured the farmers and threw their
political strength away in a vain campaign.
''The poor farmers," Ernest once laughed savagely;
''the trusts have them both coming and going."
/ And that was really the situation. The seven great
' trusts, working together, had pooled their enormous
surpluses and made a farm trust. The railroads, con-
trolling rates, and the bankers and stock exchange
gamesters, controlling prices, had long since bled the
farmers into indebtedness. The bankers, and all the
trusts for that matter, had likewise long since loaned
colossal amounts of money to the farmers. The farmers
were in the net. All that remained to be done was the
drawing in of the net. This the farm trust proceeded
^ to do.
The hard times of 1912 had already caused a fright-
ful slump in the farm markets. Prices were now
THE GENERAL STRIKE 207
deliberately pressed down to bankruptcy, while the
railroads, with extortionate rates, broke the back of
the farmer-camel. Thus the farmers were compelled
to borrow more and more, while they were prevented
from paying back old loans. Then ensued the great
foreclosing of mortgages and enforced collection of
notes. The farmers simply surrendered the land to
the farm trust. There was nothing else for them to do.
And having surrendered the land, the farmers next
went to work for the farm trust, becoming managers,
superintendents, foremen, and common laborers. They
worked for wages. They became villeins, in short —
serfs bound to the soil by a living wage. They coulc|
not leave their masters, for their masters composed the
Plutocracy. They could not go to the cities, for there,
also, the Plutocracy was in control. They had bu^t
one alternative, — to leave the soil and become va-
grants, in brief, to starve. And even there they weije
frustrated, for stringent vagrancy laws were passed an'd
rigidly enforced. i
Of course, here and there, farmers, and even whole
communities of farmers, escaped expropriation by vir-
tue of exceptional conditions. But they were merely
strays and did not count, and they were gathered in
anyway during the following year.^
Thus it was that in the fall of 1912 the socialist
* The destruction of the Roman yeomanry proceeded far less rap-
idly than the destruction of the American farmers and small capital-
208 TI-IE IRON HEEL
leaders, with the exception of Ernest, decided that the
end of capitaHsm had come. What of the hard times
and the consequent vast army of the unemployed;
what of the destruction of the farmers and the middle
class; and what of the decisive defeat administered
all along the line to the labor unions; the socialists
were really justified in believing that the end of capital-
ism had come and in themselves throwing down the
gauntlet to the Plutocracy.
I"~~ Alas, how we underestimated the strength of the
enemy ! Everywhere the socialists proclaimed their
coming victory at the ballot-box, while, in unmistak-
able terms, they stated the situation. The Plutocracy
accepted the challenge. / It was the Plutocracy, weigh-
ing and balancing, that defeated us by dividing our
^trength. It was the Plutocracy, through its secret
(agents, that raised the cry that socialism was sacri-
legious and atheistic ; it was the Plutocracy that
Whipped the churches, and especially the Catholic
ists. There was momentum in the twentieth century, while there
was practically none in ancient Rome.
Numbers of the farmers, impelled by an insane lust for the soil,
and willing to show what beasts they could become, tried to escape
expropriation by withdrawing from any and all market-dealing.
They sold nothing. They bought nothing. Among themselves a
primitive barter began to spring up. Their privation and hardships
were terrible, but they persisted. It became quite a movement, in
fact. The manner in which they were beaten was unique and logical
and simple. The Plutocracy, by virtue of its possession of the gov-
ernment, raised their taxes. It was the weak joint in their armor.
Neither buying nor selling, they had no money, and in the end their
land was sold to pay the taxes.
THE GENERAL STRIKE 209
Church, into line, and robbed us of a portion of th'e""^
labor vote. And it was the Plutocracy, through its /
secret agents of course, that encouraged the Grange ;
Party and even spread it to the cities into the ranks )
of the dying middle class. "^
Nevertheless the socialist landslide occurred. But,
instead of a sweeping victory with chief executive
officers and majorities in all legislative bodies, we found
ourselves in the minority. It is true, we elected fifty
Congressmen; but when they took their seats in the
spring of 1913, they found themselves without power
of any sort. Yet they were more fortunate than the
Grangers, who captured a dozen state governments,
and who, in the spring, were not permitted to take
possession of the captured offices. The incumbents
refused to retire, and the courts were in the hands of
the Oligarchy. But this is too far in advance of events.
I have yet to tell of the stirring times of the winter of
1912.
The hard times at home had caused an immense
decrease in consumption. Labor, out of work, had no
wages with which to buy. The result was that the
Plutocracy found a greater surplus than ever on its
hands. This surplus it was compelled to dispose of
abroad, and, what of its colossal plans, it needed money.
Because of its strenuous efforts to dispose of the sur-
plus in the world market, the Plutocracy clashed with
Germany. Economic clashes were usually succeeded
210 THE IRON HEEL
by wars, and this particular clash was no exception.
The great German war-lord prepared, and so did the
United States prepare.
The war-cloud hovered dark and ominous. The
stage was set for a world-catastrophe, for in all the
world were hard times, labor troubles, perishing middle
classes, armies of unemployed, clashes of economic
interests in the world-market, and mutterings and
rumblings of the socialist revolution.^
The Oligarchy wanted the war with Germany. And
it wanted the war for a dozen reasons. In the juggling
of events such a war would cause, in the reshuffling of
the international cards and the making of new treaties
* For a long time these mutterings and rumblings had been heard.
As far back as 1906 a.d., Lord Avebury, an Englishman, uttered the
following in the House of Lords : " The unrest in Europe, the spread
of socialism, and the ominous rise of Anarchism, are warnings to the
governments and the ruling classes that the condition of the working
classes in Europe is becoming intolerable, and that if a revolution is to
be avoided some steps must be taken to increase wages, reduce the hours
of labor, and lower the prices of the necessaries of life." The Wall
Street Journal, a stock gamesters' publication, in commenting upon
Lord Avebury' s speech, said: " These words were spoken by an aristo-
crat and a member of the most conservative body in all Europe. That
gives them all the more significance. They contain more valuable
political economy than is to be found in most of the books. They sound a
note of warning. Take heed, gentleinen of the war and navy depart-
ments ! "
At the same time, Sydney Brooks, writing in America, in Harper's
Weekly, said : " You will not hear the socialists mentioned in Washing-
ton. Why should you ? The politicians are always the last people
in this country to see what is going on under their noses. They will jeer
at me when I prophesy, and prophesy with the utmost confidence, that-
at the next presidential election the socialists will poll over a m,illion
votes."
THE GENERAL STRIKE 211
and alliances, the Oligarchy had much to gain. And,
furthermore, the war would consume many national
surpluses, reduce the armies of unemployed that men-
aced all countries, and give the Oligarchy a breathing
space in which to perfect its plans and carry them out.
Such a war would virtually put the Oligarchy in pos-
session of the world-market. Also, such a war would
create a large standing army that need never be dis-
banded, while in the minds of the people would be
substituted the issue, '^ America versus Germany," in
place of ''Socialism versus Oligarchy."
And truly the war would have done all these things
had it not been for the socialists, A secret meeting of
the Western leaders was held in our four tiny rooms in
Pell Street. Here was first considered the stand the
socialists were to take. It was not the first time we
had put our foot down upon war,^ but it was the first
time we had done so in the United States. After our
secret meeting we got in touch with the national or-
ganization, and soon our code cables were passing back
^ It was at the very beginning of the twentieth century a.d., that
the international organization of the sociahsts finally formulated their
long-maturing policy on war. Epitomized, their doctrine was:
" Why should the workingmen of one country fight with the workingmen
of another country for the benefit of their capitalist masters ? "
On May 21, 1905 a.d., when war threatened between Austria and
Italy, the socialists of Italy, Austria, and Hungary held a conference
at Trieste, and threatened a general strike of the workingmen of both
countries in case war was declared. This was repeated the following
year, when the "Morocco Affair" threatened to involve France,
Germany, and England.
212 THE IRON HEEL
and forth across the Atlantic between us and the
International Bureau.
The German socialists were ready to act with us.
There were over five million of them, many of them
in the standing army, and, in addition, they were on
friendly terms with the labor unions. In both coun-
tries the socialists came out in bold declaration against
the war and threatened the general strike. And in the
meantime they made preparation for the general
strike. Furthermore, the revolutionar}^ parties in all
countries gave public utterance to the socialist principle
of international peace that must be preserved at all
hazards, even to the extent of revolt and revolution at
home.
The general strike was the one great Adctory we
American socialists won. On the 4th of December
the American minister was withdrawn from the German
capital. That night a German fleet made a dash on
Honolulu, sinking three American cruisers and a
revenue cutter, and bombarding the city. Next day
both Germany and the United States declared war, and
within an hour the socialists called the general strike
in both countries.
For the first time the German war-lord faced the men
of his empire who made his empire go. Without them
he could not run his empire. The novelty of the
situation lay in that their revolt was passive. They
did not fight. They did nothing. And by doing
THE GENERAL STRIKE 213
nothing they tied their war-lord's hands. He would
have asked for nothing better than an opportunity to
loose his war-dogs on his rebellious proletariat. But
this was denied him. He could not loose his war-
dogs. Neither could he mobilize his army to go forth
to war, nor could he punish his recalcitrant subjects.
Not a wheel moved in his empire. Not a train ran, not
a telegraphic message went over the wires, for the teleg-
raphers and railroad men had ceased work along with
the rest of the population.
And as it was in Germany, so it was in the United
States. x4t last organized labor had learned its lesson.
Beaten decisively on its own chosen field, it had aban-
doned that field and come over to the political field
of the socialists ; for the general strike was a political .
strike. Besides, organized labor had been so badly |
beaten that it did not care. It joined in the general !
strike out of sheer desperation. The workers threw
down their tools and left their tasks by the millions.
Especially notable were the machinists. Their heads ■
were bloody, their organization had apparently been |
destroyed, yet out they came, along with their allies j
in the metal-working trades. |
Even the common laborers and all unorganized labor
ceased work. The strike had tied everything up so
that nobody could work. Besides, the women j)rov^ed
to be the strongest promoters of the strike. They set
their faces against the war. They did not want their
214 THE IRON HEEL
men to go forth to die. Then, also, the idea of the
general strike caught the mood of the people. It
struck their sense of humor. The idea was infectious.
The children struck in all the schools, and such teachers
as came, went home again from deserted class rooms.
The general strike took the form of a great national
picnic. And the idea of the solidarity of labor, so
evidenced, appealed to the imagination of all. And,
finally, there was no danger to be incurred by the
colossal frolic. When everybody was guilty, how was
anybody to be punished?
.' The United States was paralyzed. No one knew
what was happening. There were no newspapers, no
letters, no despatches. Every community was as com-
pletely isolated as though ten thousand miles of pri-
meval wilderness stretched between it and the rest of
jthe world. For that matter, the world had ceased to
'exist. And for a week this state of affairs was main-
' tained.
In San Francisco we did not know what was happening
even across the bay in Oakland or Berkeley. The effect
on one's sensibilities was weird, depressing. It seemed
as though some great cosmic thing lay dead. The
pulse of the land had ceased to beat. Of a truth the
nation had died. There were no wagons rumbling on
the streets, no factory whistles, no hum of electricity
in the air, no passing of street cars, no cries of news-
boys — nothing but persons who at rare intervals
THE GENERAL STRIKE 215
went by like furtive ghosts, themselves oppressed and
made unreal by the silence.
And during that week of silence the Oligarchy was \
taught its lesson. And well it learned the lesson. The L
general strike was a warning. It should never occur /
again. The Oligarchy would see to that.
At the end of the week, as had been prearranged, the
telegraphers of Germany and the United States returned
to their posts. Through them the socialist leaders of
both countries presented their ultimatum to the rulers.
The war should be called off, or the general strike would
continue. It did not take long to come to an under-
standing. The war was declared off, and the popula-
^ons of both countries returned to their tasks.
It was this renewal of peace that brought about the
alliance between Germany and the United States.
In reality, this was an alliance between the Emperor
and the Oligarchy, for the purpose of meeting their
common foe, the revolutionary proletariat of both
untries. And it was this alliance that the Oligarchy
afterward so treacherously broke when the German
socialists rose and drove the war-lord from his throne.
It was the very thing the Oligarchy had played for —
the destruction of its great rival in the world-market.
With the German Emperor out of the way, Germany
would have no surplus to sell abroad. By the very
nature of the socialist state, the German population
would consume all that it produced. Of course, it
216 THE IRON HEEL
would trade abroad certain things it produced for
things it did not produce ; but this would be quite differ-
ent from an unconsumable surplus.
''I'll wager the Oligarchy finds justification," Ernest
said, when its treachery to the German Emperor be-
came known. ''As usual, the Oligarchy will believe
it has done right."
And sure enough. The Oligarchy's public defence
for the act was that it had done it for the sake of the
American people whose interests it was looking out for.
It had flung its hated rival out of the world-market and
enabled us to dispose of our surplus in that market.
"And the howling folly of it is that we are so helpless
that such idiots really are managing our interests,"
was Ernest's comment. "They have enabled us to
sell more abroad, which means that we'll be compelled
to consume less at home."
CHAPTER XIV
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
As early as January, 1913, Ernest saw the true trend
of affairs, but he could not get his brother leaders to
see the vision of the Iron Heel that had arisen in his
brain. They were too confident. Events were rush-
ing too rapidly to culmination. A crisis had come in
world affairs. The American Oligarchy was practically
in possession of the world-market, and scores of coun-
tries were flung out of that market with unconsumable
and unsalable surpluses on their hands. For such
countries nothing remained but reorganization. They
could not continue their method of producing surpluses.
The capitalistic system, so far as they were concerned,
had hopelessly broken down.
The reorganization of these countries took the form
of revolution. It was a time of confusion and violence.
Everywhere institutions and governments were crash-
ing. Everywhere, with the exception of two or three
countries, the erstwhile capitalist masters fought
bitterly for their possessions. But the governments
were taken away from them by the militant proletariat.
217
218 THE IRON HEEL
At last was being realized Karl Marx's classic: "The
knell of private capitalist property sounds. The
expropriators are expropriated." And as fast as
capitalistic governments crashed, cooperative com-
monwealths arose in their place.
''Why does the United States lag behind?"; "Get
busy, 3'ou American revolutionists!"; "What's the
matter with America?" — were the messages sent to
us by our successful comrades in other lands. But we
could not keep up. The Oligarchy stood in the way.
Its bulk, like that of some huge monster, blocked our
path.
"Wait till we take office in the spring," we answered.
"Then you'll see."
Behind this lay our secret. We had won over the
Grangers, and in the spring a dozen states would pass
into their hands by virtue of the elections of the pre-
ceding fall. At once would be instituted a dozen
cooperative commonwealth states. After that, the
rest would be easy.
"But what if the Grangers fail to get possession?"
Ernest demanded. And his comrades called him a
calamity howler.
But this failure to get possession was not the chief
danger that Ernest had in mind. What he foresaw
was the defection of the great labor unions and the
rise of the castes.
"Ghent has taught the oUgarchs how to do it,"
THE BEGINNING OF THE END 219
Ernest said. '^I'll wager they've made a text-book
out of his 'Benevolent Feudalism.'" ^
Never shall I forget the night when, after a hot dis-
cussion with half a dozen labor leaders, Ernest turned
to me and said quietly: ''That settles it. The Iron
Heel has won. The end is in sight."
This little conference in our home was unofficial ; but
Ernest, like the rest of his comrades, was working for
assurances from the labor leaders that they would call
out their men in the next general strike. O'Connor, the
president of the Association of Machinists, had been
foremost of the six leaders present in refusing to give
such assurance.
"You have seen that you were beaten soundly at
your old tactics of strike and boycott," Ernest urged.
O'Connor and the others nodded their heads.
"And you saw what a general strike would do,"
Ernest went on. "We stopped the war with Germany.
Never was there so fine a display of the solidarity and
the power of labor. Labor can and will rule the world.
If you continue to stand with us, we'll put an end to
the reign of capitalism. It is your only hope. And
1 "Our Benevolent Feudalism," a book published in 1902 a.d., by
W. J. Ghent. It has always been insisted that Ghent put the idea of
the Oligarchy into the minds of the great capitalists. This belief
persists throughout the literature of the three centuries of the Iron
Heel, and even in the literature of the first century of the Brotherhood
of Man. To-day we know better, but our knowledge does not over-
come the fact that Ghent remains the most abused innocent man in
all history.
220 THE IRON HEEL
what is more, you know it. There is no other way out.
No matter what you do under your old tactics, you are
doomed to defeat, if for no other reason because tlie
masters control the courts." ^
''You run ahead too fast/' O'Connor answered. "You
don't know all the ways out. There is another way out.
We know what we're about. We're sick of strikes.
They've got us beaten that way to a frazzle. But
I don't think we'll ever need to call our men out
again."
"What is your way out?" Ernest demanded bluntly.
O'Connor laughed and shook his head. "I can tell
you this much : We've not been asleep. And we're not
dreaming now."
* As a sample of the decisions of the courts adverse to labor, the
following instances are given. In the coal-mining regions the em-
ployment of children was notorious. In 1905 a.d., labor succeeded
in getting a law passed in Pennsylvania providing that proof of the
age of the child and of certain educational qualifications must accom-
pany the oath of the parent. This was promptly declared unconstitu-
tional by the Luzerne County Court, on the ground that it violated the
Fourteenth Amendment in that it discriminated between individuals
of the same class — namely, children above fourteen years of age
and children below. The state court sustained the decision. The
New York Court of Special Sessions, in 1905 a.d., declared unconsti-
/'^ tutional the law prohibiting minors and women from working in fac-
tories after nine o'clock at night, the ground taken being that such a
law was "class legislation." Again, the bakers of that time v.-ere
terribly overworked. The New York Legislature passed a law re-
stricting work in bakeries to ten hours a day. In 1906 a.d., the Su-
pjjreme Court of the United States declared this law to be unconstitu-
tional. In part the decision read : " There is no reasonable ground
f^r interfering with the liberty of persons or the right of free contract by
determining the hours of labor in the occupation of a baker."
THE BEGINNING OF THE END 221
''There's nothing to be afraid of, or ashamed of, I
hope," Ernest challenged.
*'I guess we know our business best," was the re-
tort.
''It's a dark business, from the way you hide it,"
Ernest said with growing anger.
"We've paid for our experience in sweat and blood,
and we've earned all that's coming to us," was the
reply. "Charity begins at home."
"If you're afraid to tell me your way out, I'll tell it
to you." Ernest's blood was up. "You're going in for
grab-sharing. You've made terms with the enemy,
that's what you've done. You've sold out the cause
of labor, of all labor. You are leaving the battle-field
like cowards."
"I'm not saying anything," O'Connor answered
sullenly. "Only I guess we know what's best for us a
little bit better than you do."
"And you don't care a cent for what is best for the
rest of labor. You kick it into the ditch."
"I'm not saying anything," O'Connor replied, "ex-
cept that I'm president of the Machinists' Association,
and it's my business to consider the interests of the
men I represent, that's all."
And then, when the labor leaders had left, Ernest,
with the calmness of defeat, outlined to me the course
of events to come.
"The socialists used to foretell with joy," he said,
222 THE IRON HEEL
'' the coming of the day when organized labor, de-
feated on the industrial field, would come over on to the
political field. Well, the Iron Heel has defeated the
labor unions on the industrial field and driven them
over to the political field ; and instead of this being
joyful for us, it will be a source of grief. The Iron Heel
learned its lesson. We showed it our power in the
general strike. It has taken steps to prevent another
general strike."
''But how?" I asked.
''Simply by subsidizing the great unions. They
won't join in the next general strike. Therefore it
won't be a general strike."
"But the Iron Heel can't maintain so costly a pro-
gramme forever," I objected.
"Oh, it hasn't subsidized all of the unions. That's
not necessary. Here is what is going to happen.
Wages are going to be advanced and hours shortened
in the railroad unions, the iron and steel workers
unions, and the engineer and machinist unions. In
these unions more favorable conditions will continue
to prevail. Membership in these unions will become
like seats in Paradise."
"Still I don't see," I objected. "What is to become
of the other unions ? There are far more unions outside
of this combination than in it."
"The other unions will be ground out of existence —
.all of them. For, don't you see, the railway men,
THE BEGINNING OF THE END 223
machinists and engineers, iron and steel workers, do all
of the vitally essential work in our machine civilization.
Assured of their faithfulness, the Iron Heel can snap;
its fingers at all the rest of labor. Iron, steel, coal,,
machinery, and transportation constitute the back-
bone of the whole industrial fabric." L
"But coal?" I queried. ''There are nearly a mill-
ion coal miners."
''They are practically unskilled labor. They will
not count. Their wages will go down and their hours
will increase. They will be slaves like all the rest of us,
and they will become about the most bestial of all of
us. They will be compelled to work, just as the farmers
are compelled to work now for the masters who robbed
them of their land. And the same with all the other
unions outside the combination. Watch them wobble
and go to pieces, and their members become slaves
driven to toil by empty stomachs and the law of the
land.
"Do you know what will happen to Farley ^ and his
strike-breakers? I'll tell you. Strike-breaking as an
occupation will cease. There won't be any more
strikes. In place of strikes will be slave revolts.
' James Farley — a notorious strike-breaker of the period. A
man more courageous than ethical, and of undeniable ability. He
rose high under the rule of the Iron Heel and finally was translated into
the oligarch class. He was assassinated in 1932 by Sarah Jenkins,
whose husband, thirty years before, had been killed by Farley's strike-
breakers.
224 THE IRON HEEL
Farley and his gang will be promoted to slave-driving.
Oh, it won't be called that ; it will be called enforcing
the law of the land that compels the laborers to work.
It simply prolongs the fight, this treacherj^ of the big
unions. Heaven only knows now where and when the
Revolution w^ill triumph."
'^But wdth such a powerful combination as the Oli-
garchy and the big unions, is there any reason to
believe that the Revolution will ever triumph?" I
queried, ''May not the combination endure forever?"
He shook his head. ''One of our generalizations is
that every system founded upon class and caste con-
tains within itself the germs of its own decay. When
a system is founded upon class, how can caste be pre-
vented? The Iron Heel will not be able to prevent it,
and in the end caste w^ill destroy the Iron Heel. The
oligarchs have alread}'" developed caste among them-
selves ; but wait until the favored unions develop caste.
The Iron Heel will use all its power to prevent it, but
it will fail.
"In the favored unions are the flower of the American
workingmen. They are strong, efficient men. They
have become members of those unions through com-
petition for place. Every fit workman in the United
States will be possessed by the ambition to become a
member of the favored unions. The Oligarchy will
encourage such ambition and the consequent compe-
tition. Thus will the strong men, who might else be
THE BEGINNING OF THE END 225
revolutionists, be won away and their strength used
to bolster the Oligarchy.
''On the other hand, the labor castes, the members
of the favored unions, will strive to make their organ-
izations into close corporations. And they will suc-
ceed. Membership in the labor castes will become
hereditary. Sons will succeed fathers, and there will
be no inflow of new strength from that eternal reser-
voir of strength, the common people. This will mean
deterioration of the labor castes, and in the end they
will become weaker and weaker. At the same time, as
an institution, they will become temporarily all-powerful.
They Vv^ill be like the guards of the palace in old Rome,
and there will be palace revolutions whereby the labor
castes v/ill seize the reins of power. And there will '
be counter-palace revolutions of the oligarchs, and some-
times the one, and sometimes the other, will be in power.
And through it all the inevitable caste-weakening will
go on, so that in the end the common people will come ^
into their own."
This foreshadowing of a slow social evolution was
made when Ernest was first depressed by the defection
of the great unions. I never agreed with him in it,
and I disagree now, as I write these lines, more heartily
than ever ; for even now, though Ernest is gone, we are
on the verge of the revolt that will sweep all oligarchies
away. Yet I have here given Ernest's prophecy be-
cause it was his prophecy. In spite of his belief in it,
Q
226 THE IRON HEEL
he worked like a giant against it, and he, more than
any man, has made possible the revolt that even now
waits the signal to burst forth/
''But if the Oligarchy persists," I asked him that
evening, ''what will become of the great surpluses that
will fall to its share every year?"
"The surpluses will have to be exjDended somehow,"
he answered; "and trust the oligarchs to find a way.
Magnificent roads will be built. There will be great
achievements in science, and especially in art. When
the oligarchs have completely mastered the people, they
will have time to spare for other things. They will
become worshippers of beauty. They will become art-
lovers. And under their direction, and generously re-
warded, will toil the artists. The result will be great
art ; for no longer, as up to yesterday, will the artists
pander to the bourgeois taste of the middle class. It
will be great art, I tell you, and wonder cities will arise
that will make tawdry and cheap the cities of old time.
And in these cities will the oligarchs dwell and worship
beauty.^
" Thus will the surplus be constantly expended while
1 Everhard' s social foresight was remarkable. As clearly as in the
light of past events, he saw the defection of the favored unions, the
rise and the slow decay of the labor castes, and the struggle between
the decaying oligarchs and labor castes for control of the great gov-
ernmental machine.
^ We cannot but marvel at Everhard' s foresight. Before ever the
thought of wonder cities like Ardis and Asgard entered the minds of
the oligarchs, Everhard saw those cities and the inevitable necessity
for their- creation.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END 227
labor does the work. The building of these great works
and cities will give a starvation ration to millions of
common laborers, for the enormous bulk of the surplus
will compel an equally enormous expenditure, and the
oligarchs will build for a thousand years — ay, for ten
thousand years. They will build as the Egyptians and
the Babylonians never dreamed of building; and when
the oligarchs have passed away, their great roads and
their wonder cities will remain for the brotherhood of
labor to tread upon and dwell within.^
''These things the oligarchs will do because they can-
not help doing them. These great works will be the
form their expenditure of the surplus will take, and in
the same way that the ruling classes of Egypt of long
ago expended the surplus they robbed from the people
by the building of temples and pyramids. Under the
oligarchs will flourish, not a priest class, but an artist
class. And in place of the merchant class of bour-
geoisie will be the labor castes. And beneath will be
the abyss, wherein will fester and starve and rot, and
ever renew itself, the common people, the great bulk of
the population. And in the end, who knows in what
day, the common people will rise up out of the abyss ;
* And since that day of prophecy, have passed away the three cen-
turies of the Iron Heel and the four centuries of the Brotherhood of
Man, and to-day we tread the roads and dwell in the cities that the
oligarchs built. It is true, we are even now building still more wonder-
ful wonder cities, but the wonder cities of the oligarchs endiu-e, and
I write these lines in Ardis, one of the most wonderful of them all.
228 THE IRON HEEL
the labor castes and the Oligarchy will crumble away;
and then, at last, after the travail of the centuries, will
it be the day of the common man. I had thought to see
that day; but now I know that I shall never see it."
He paused and looked at me, and added :
*' Social evolution is exasperatingly slow, isn't it,
sweetheart?"
My arms were about him, and his head was on my
breast.
''Sing me to sleep," he murmured whimsically. ''I
have had a visioning, and I wish to forget."
CHAPTER XV
LAST DAYS
It was near the end of January, 1913, that the
changed attitude of the Oligarchy toward the favored
unions was made pubhc. The newspapers pubhshed
information of an unprecedented rise in wages and
shortening of hours for the railroad employees, the
iron and steel workers, and the engineers and machin-
ists. But the whole truth was not told. The oligarchs
did not dare permit the telling of the whole truth.
In reality, the wages had been raised much higher,
and the privileges were correspondingly greater. All
this was secret, but secrets will out. Members of the
favored unions told their wives, and the wives gossiped,
and soon all the labor world knew what had happened.
It was merely the logical development of what in the
nineteenth century had been known as grab-sharing.
In the industrial warfare of that time, profit-sharing
had been tried. That is, the capitalists had striven to
placate the workers by interesting them financially
in their work. But profit-sharing, as a system, was
ridiculous and impossible. Profit-sharing could be
successful only in isolated cases in the midst of a system
229
230 THE IRON HEEL
of industrial strife ; for if all labor and all capital shared
profits, the same conditions would obtain as did obtain
when there was no profit-sharing.
So, out of the unpractical idea of profit-sharing, arose
the practical idea of grab-sharing. ''Give us more pay
and charge it to the public," was the slogan of the strong
unions. And here and there this selfish policy worked
successfully. In charging it to the public, it was
charged to the great mass of unorganized labor and of
weakly organized labor. These workers actually paid
the increased wages of their stronger brothers w^ho were
members of unions that were labor monopolies. This
idea, as I say, was merely carried to its logical conclu-
sion, on a large scale, by the combination of the oli-
garchs and the favored unions.^
! As soon as the secret of the defection of the favored
ijnions leaked out, there were rumblings and mutter-
y'iiigs in the labor world. Next, the favored unions with-
drew from the international organizations and broke
^ All the railroad unions entered into this combination with the
oligarchs, and it is of interest to note that the first definite application
of the poHcy of profit-grabbing was made by a railroad union in the
nineteenth century a.d., namely, the Brotherhood of Locomotive
Engineers. P. M. Arthur was for twenty years Grand Chief of the
Brotherhood. After the strike on the Pennsylvania Railroad in
1877, he broached a scheme to have the Locomotive Engineers
make terms T\dth the railroads and to "go it alone" so far as the
rest of the labor unions were concerned. This scheme was eminently
successful. It was as successful as it was selfish, and out of it was
coined the word "arthurization," to denote grab-sharing on the
part of labor unions. This word "arthurization" has long puzzled
the etymologists, but its derivation, I hope, is now made clear.
LAST DAYS 231
off all affiliations. Then came trouble and violence.;
The members of the favored unions were branded aa
traitors, and in saloons and brothels, on the streets andi
at work, and, in fact, everywhere, they were assaulted]
by the comrades they had so treacherously deserted, j
Countless heads were broken, and there were many^
killed. No member of the favored unions was safe.
They gathered together in bands in order to go to work
or to return from work. They walked always in the
middle of the street. On the sidewalk they were liable
to have their skulls crushed by bricks and cobblestone
thrown from windows and house-tops. They were
permitted to carry weapons, and the authorities aided
them in every way. Their persecutors were sentenced
to long terms in prison, where they were harshly
treated; while no man, not a member of the favored
unions, was permitted to carry weapons. Violation of
this law was made a high misdemeanor and punished
accordingly.
Outraged labor continued to wreak vengeance on
the traitors. Caste lines formed automatically. The
children of the traitors were persecuted by the children
of the workers who had been betrayed, until it was
impossible for the former to play on the streets or to
attend the public schools. Also, the wives and families
of the traitors were ostracized, while the corner gro-
ceryman who sold provisions to them was boycotted.
As a result, driven back upon themselves from every
232 THE IROx\ HEEL
side, the traitors and their families became clannish.
Finding it impossible to dwell in safety in the midst of
the betrayed proletariat, they moved into new locali-
ties inhabited by themselves alone. In this they were
favored by the oligarchs. Good dwellings, modern and
sanitary, were built for them, surrounded by spacious
yards, and separated here and there by parks and
playgrounds. Their children attended schools espe-
cially built for them, and in these schools manual train-
ing and applied science were specialized upon. Thus, and
•unavoidably, at the very beginning, out of this segre-
gation arose caste. The members of the favored unions
- became the aristocracy of labor. They were set apart
;from the rest of labor. They were better housed, better
jclothed, better fed, better treated. They were grab-
jpharing with a vengeance.
In the meantime, the rest of the working class was
more harshly treated. Many little privileges were
taken away from it, while its wages and its standard of
living steadily sank down. Incidentally, its public
schools deteriorated, and education slowly ceased to be
compulsory. The increase in the younger generation
of children who could not read nor write was perilous.
The capture of the world-market by the United States
had disrupted the rest of the world. Institutions and
governments were ever3^where crashing or transform-
ing. German)'-, Italy, France, Australia, and New
Zealand were busy forming cooperative common-
^tr
LAST DAYS 233
wealths. The British Empire was falling apart.
England's hands were full. In India revolt was in full
swing. The cry in aU Asia was, ''Asia for the Asiatics !"
And behind this cry was Japan, ever urging and aiding
the yellow and brown races against the white. And
while Japan dreamed of continental empire and strov
to realize the dream, she suppressed her own prole
tarian revolution. It was a simple war of the castes.
Coolie versus Samurai, and the coolie socialists were
executed by tens of thousands. Forty thousand were
killed in the street-fighting of Tokio and in the futile
assault on the Mikado's palace. Kobe was a shambles ;
the slaughter of the cotton operatives by machine-guns
became classic as the most terrific execution ever
achieved by modern war machines. Most savage of all
was the Japanese Oligarchy that arose. Japan domi-
nated the East, and took to herself the whole Asiatic
portion of the world-market, with the exception of
India.
England managed to crush her own proletarian revo-
lution and to hold on to India, though she was brought
to the verge of exhaustion. Also, she was compelled
to let her great colonies slip away from her. So it
was that the socialists succeeded in making Australia
and New Zealand into cooperative commonwealths. ^
And it was for the same reason that Canada was lost
to the mother country. But Canada crushed her own
socialist revolution, being aided in this by the Iron
234 THE IRON HEEL
Heel. At the same time, the Iron Heel helped Mexico
and Cuba to put down revolt. The result was that the
Iron Heel was firmly established in the New World.
It had welded into one compact political mass the
whole of North America from the Panama Canal to
the Arctic Ocean.
And England, at the sacrifice of her great colonies,
had succeeded only in retaining India. But this was
no more than temporary. The struggle with Japan and
the rest of Asia for India was merely delayed. England
was destined shortly to lose India, while behind that
event loomed the struggle between a united Asia and
the world.
And while all the world was torn with conflict, we of
the United States were not placid and peaceful. The
defection of the great unions had prevented our pro-
letarian revolt, but violence was everywhere. In
addition to the labor troubles, and the discontent of
the farmers and of the remnant of the middle class, a
religious re\dval had blazed up. An offshoot of the
Seventh Day Adventists sprang into sudden promi-
nence, proclaiming the end of the world.
"Confusion thrice confounded!" Ernest cried.
"How can we hope for solidarity with all these cross
purposes and conflicts?"
And truly the religious revival assumed formidable
proportions. The people, what of their wretchedness,
and of their disappointment in aU things earthly,
LAST DAYS 235
were ripe and eager for a heaven where industrial
tyrants entered no more than camels passed through
needle-eyes. Wild-eyed itinerant preachers swarmed
over the land ; and despite the prohibition of the civil
authorities, and the persecution for disobedience, the
flames of religious frenzy were fanned by countless
camp-meetings.
It was the last days, they claimed, the beginning of
the end of the world. The four winds had been loosed.
God had stirred the nations to strife. It was a time
of visions and miracles, while seers and prophetesses
were legion. The people ceased work by hundreds of
thousands and fled to the mountains, there to await the
imminent coming of God and the rising of the hundred
and forty and four thousand to heaven. But in the
meantime God did not come, and they starved to death
in great numbers. In their desperation they ravaged
the farms for food, and the consequent tumult and
anarchy in the country districts but increased the
woes of the poor expropriated farmers.
Also, the farms and warehouses were the property of
the Iron Heel. Armies of troops were put into the
field, and the fanatics were herded back at the bayonet
point to their tasks in the cities. There they broke out
in ever recurring mobs and riots. Their leaders were
executed for sedition or confined in madhouses. Those
who were executed went to their deaths with all the glad-
ness of martyrs. It was a time of madness. The unrest
236 THE IRON HEEL
spread. In the swamps and deserts and waste places,
from Florida to Alaska, the small groups of Indians
that survived were dancing ghost dances and waiting
the coming of a Messiah of their own.
And through it all, with a serenity and certitude that
was terrifying, continued to rise the form of that mon-
ster of the ages, the Oligarchy. With iron hand and
iron heel it mastered the surging millions, out of confu-
sion brought order, out of the very chaos wrought its
own foundation and structure.
''Just wait till we get in," the Grangers said —
Calvin said it to us in our Pell Street quarters. ''Look
at the states we've captured. With you socialists to
back us, we'll make them sing another song when we
take office."
"The millions of the discontented and the impover-
ished are ours," the socialists said. "The Grangers
have come over to us, the farmers, the middle class,
and the laborers. The capitalist system will fall to
pieces. In another month we send fifty men to Con-
gress. Two years hence every office will be ours,
from the President down to the local dog-catcher."
To all of which Ernest would shake his head and say :
"How many rifles have you got? Do you know
where you can get plenty of lead? When it comes to
powder, chemical mixtures are better than mechanical
mixtures, you take my word."
CHAPTER XVI
THE END
When it came time for Ernest and me to go to Wash-
ington, father did not accompany us. He had become
enamoured of proletarian hfe. He looked upon our
slum neighborhood as a great sociological laboratory,
and he had embarked upon an apparently endless orgy
of investigation. He chummed with the laborers, and
was an intimate in scores of homes. Also, he worked at
odd jobs, and the work was play as well as learned
investigation, for he delighted in it and was always
returning home with copious notes and bubbling over
with new adventures. He was the perfect scientist.
There was no need for his working at all, because
Ernest managed to earn enough from his translating
to take care of the three of us. But father insisted
on pursuing his favorite phantom, and a protean phan-
tom it was, judging from the jobs he worked at. I shall
never forget the evening he brought home his street
pedler's outfit of shoe-laces and suspenders, nor the
time I went into the little corner grocery to make some
purchase and had him wait on me. After that I was
237
238 THE IRON HEEL
not surprised when he tended bar for a week in the
saloon across the street. He worked as a night watch-
man, hawked potatoes on the street, pasted labels
in a cannery warehouse, was utility man in a paper-
box factory, and water-carrier for a street railway
construction gang, and even joined the Dishwashers'
Union just before it fell to pieces.
I think the Bishop's example, so far as wearing
apparel was concerned, must have fascinated father,
for he wore the cheap cotton shirt of the laborer and the
overalls with the narrow strap about the hips. Yet one
habit remained to him from the old life; he always
dressed for dinner, or supper, rather.
I could be happy anywhere with Ernest; and
father's happiness in our changed circumstances
rounded out my own happiness.
'^When I was a boy," father said, "I was very curi-
ous. I wanted to know why things were and how
they came to pass. That was why I became a physi-
cist. The life in me to-day is just as curious as it was
in my boyhood, and it's the being curious that makes
life worth living."
Sometimes he ventured north of Market Street into
the shopping and theatre district, where he sold papers,
ran errands, and opened cabs. There, one day, clos-
ing a cab , he encountered Mr. Wickson. In high glee
father described the incident to us that evening.
"Wickson looked at me sharply when I closed the
THE END 239
door on him, and muttered, 'Well, I'll be damned.'
Just like that he said it, 'Well, I'll be damned.' His
face turned red and he was so confused that he forgot
to tip me. But he must have recovered himself
quickly, for the cab hadn't gone fifty feet before it
turned around and came back. He leaned out of the
door.
'''Look here, Professor,' he said, 'this is too much.
What can I do for you ? '
"'I closed the cab door for you,' I answered. 'Ac-
cording to common custom you might give me a dime.'
'"Bother that!' he snorted. 'I mean something
substantial.'
"He was certainly serious — a twinge of ossified
conscience or something; and so I considered with
grave deliberation for a moment.
"His face was quite expectant when I began my
answer, but you should have seen it when I finished.
"'You might give me back my home,' I said, 'and
my stock in the Sierra Mills.'"
Father paused.
"What did he say?" I questioned eagerly.
"What could he say? He said nothing. But I
said, 'I hope you are happy.' He looked at me curi-
ously. 'Tell me, are you happy?' I asked.
"He ordered the cabman to drive on, and went away
swearing horribly. And he didn't give me the dime,
much less the home and stock; so you see, my dear,
240 THE IRON HEEL
3^our father's street-arab career is beset with disap-
pointments."
And so it was that father kept on at our Pell Street
quarters, while Ernest and I went to AVashington.
Except for the final consummation, the old order had
passed away, and the final consummation was nearer
than I dreamed. Contrary to our expectation, no
obstacles were raised to prevent the socialist Congress-
men from taking their seats. Everything went
smoothly, and I laughed at Ernest when he looked
upon the very smoothness as something ominous.
We found our socialist comrades confident, opti-
mistic of their strength and of the things they would
accomplish. A few Grangers who had been elected to
Congress increased our strength, and an elaborate pro-
gramme of what was to be done was prepared by the
united forces. In all of which Ernest joined loyally and
energetically, though he could not forbear, now and
again, from saying, apropos of nothing in particular,
''When it comes to powder, chemical mixtures are
better than mechanical mixtures, you take my word."
The trouble arose first with the Grangers in the va-
rious states they had captured at the last election.
There were a dozen of these states, but the Grangers
who had been elected were not permitted to take office.
The incumbents refused to get out. It was very sim-
ple. They merely charged illegality in the elections
and wrapped up the whole situation in the interminable
THE END 241
red tape of the law. The Grangers were powerless.
The courts were the last recourse, and the courts were
in the hands of their enemies.
This was the moment of danger. If the cheated
Grangers became violent, all was lost. How we
socialists worked to hold them back ! There were days
and nights when Ernest never closed his eyes in sleep.
The big leaders of the Grangers saw the peril and were
with us to a man. But it was all of no avail. The
Oligarchy wanted violence, and it set its agents-
provocateurs to work. Without discussion, it was the
agents-provocateurs who caused the Peasant Revolt.
In a dozen states the revolt flared up. The ex- '■
propriated farmers took forcible possession of the
state governments. Of course this was unconstitu-
tional, and of course the United States put its soldiers -^L
into the field. Everywhere the agents-provocateurs
urged the people on. These emissaries of the Iron
Heel disguised themselves as artisans, farmers, and
farm laborers. In Sacramento, the capital of Cali-
fornia, the Grangers had succeeded in maintaining
order. Thousands of secret agents were rushed to the
devoted city. In mobs composed wholly of themselves,
they fired and looted buildings and factories. They
worked the people up until they joined them in the
pillage. Liquor in large quantities was distributed
among the slum classes further to inflame their minds.
And then, when all was ready, appeared upon the
242
THE IRON HEEL
VV'\!
scene the soldiers of the United States, who were, in
reality, the soldiers of the Iron Heel. Eleven thousand
men, women, and children were shot down on the streets
of Sacramento or murdered in their houses. The
aational government took possession of the state gov-
ernment, and all was over for California.
And as with California, so elsewhere. Every Granger
state was ravaged with violence and washed in blood.
First, disorder was precipitated by the secret agents
and the Black Hundreds, then the troops were called
out. Rioting and mob-rule reigned throughout the
rural districts. Day and night the smoke of burning
f \u ' ''' j ' farms, warehouses, villages, and cities filled the sky.
^ ; Dynamite appeared. Railroad bridges and tunnels
were blown up and trains were wrecked. The poor
; farmers were shot and hanged in great numbers.
• Reprisals were bitter, and many plutocrats and a,rmy
officers were murdered. Blood and vengeance were
in men's hearts. The regular troops fought the farm-
ers as savagely as had they been Indians. And the
regular troops had cause. Twenty-eight hundred of
them had been annihilated in a tremendous series of
dynamite explosions in Oregon, and in a similar man-
ner, a number of train loads, at different times and
places, had been destroyed. So it was that the regular
troops fought for their lives as well as did the farmers.
As for the militia, the militia law of 1903 was put
into effect^ and the workers of one state were com-
THE END 243
pelled, under pain of death, to shoot down their
comrade-workers in other states. Of course, the
mihtia law did not work smoothly at first. Many
mihtia officers were murdered, and many mihtiamen
were executed by drumhead court martial. Ernest's
prophecy was strikingly fulfilled in the cases of Mr.
Kowalt and Mr. Asmunsen. Both were eligible for
the militia, and both w^ere drafted to serve in the
punitive expedition that was despatched from Cali-
fornia against the farmers of Missouri. Mr. Kowalt
and Mr. Asmunsen refused to serve. They were given
short shrift. Drumhead court martial was their por-
tion, and military execution their end. They were
shot with their backs to the firing squad.
Many young men fled into the mountains to escape
serving in the militia. There they became outlaws,
and it was not until more peaceful times that they
received their punishment. It was drastic. The gov-
ernment issued a proclamation for all law-abiding
citizens to come in from the mountains for a period
of three months. When the proclaimed date arrived,
half a million soldiers were sent into the mountainous
districts everywhere. There was no investigation, no
trial. Wherever a man was encountered, he was shot .
down on the spot. The troops operated on the basis
that no man not an outlaw remained in the mountains.
Some bands, in strong positions, fought gallantly, but
in the end every deserter from the militia met death.
244 THE IRON HEEL
A more immediate lesson, however, was impressed
on the minds of the people by the punishment meted
out to the Kansas militia. The great Kansas Mutiny
; occurred at the very beginning of military operations
; against the Grangers. Six thousand of the militia
1 mutinied. They had been for several weeks very tur-
^ bulent and sullen, and for that reason had been kept
\in camp. Their open mutiny, however, was without
/doubt precipitated by the agents-provocateurs.
ij On the night of the 22d of April they arose
•^nd murdered their officers, only a small remnant of
^he latter escaping. This was beyond the scheme of
•the Iron Heel, for the agents-provocateurs had done
their work too well. But everything was grist to the
U Iron Heel. It had prepared for the outbreak, and the
' killing of so many officers gave it justification for what
followed. As b)^ magic, forty thousand soldiers of the
regular army surrounded the malcontents. It was
\ a trap. The wretched militiamen found that their
I machine-guns had been tampered with, and that the
= cartridges from the captured magazines did not fit
^^ their rifles. They hoisted the white flag of surrender,
but it was ignored. There were no survivors. The
entire six thousand were annihilated. Common shell
and shrapnel were thrown in upon them from a dis-
tance, and, when, in their desperation, they charged
the encircling lines, they were mowed down by the
•machine-guns. I talked with an eye-witness, and he
THE END 245
said that the nearest any militiaman approached the
machine-guns was a hundred and fifty yards. The
earth was carpeted with the slain, and a final charge of
cavalry, with trampling of horses' hoofs, revolvers, and
sabres, crushed the wounded into the ground.
Simultaneously with the destruction of the Grangers
came the revolt of the coal miners. It was the expir-
ing effort of organized labor. Three-quarters of a
million of miners went out on strike. But they were
too widely scattered over the country to advantage
from their own strength. They were segregated in
their own districts and beaten into submission. This
was the first great slave-drive. Pocock ^ won his spurs
as a slave-driver and earned the undying hatred of the
proletariat. Countless attempts were made upon his
life, but he seemed to bear a charmed existence. It
w^as he who was responsible for the introduction of the
Russian passport system among the miners, and the
^ Albert Pocock, another of the notorious strike-breakers of earlier
years, who, to the day of his death, successfully held all the coal-
miners of the country to their task. He was succeeded by his son,
Lewis Pocock, and for five generations tliis remarkable line of slave-
drivers handled the coal mines. The elder Pocock, known as Pocock
I., has been described as follows: "A long, lean head, semicircled by a
fringe of brown and gray hair, with big cheek-bones and a hea\'y chin,
... a pale face, lustreless gray eyes, a metallic voice, and a languid
manner." He was born of humble parents, and began his career as a
bartender. He next became a private detective for a street railway
corporation, and by successive steps developed into a professional
strike-breaker. Pocock V., the last of the line, was blown up in a pump-
house by a bomb during a petty revolt of the miners in the Indian
Territory. This occurred in 2073 a.d.
246 THE IRON HEEL
denial of their right of removal from one part of the
country to another.
In the meantime, the socialists held firm. While
the Grangers expired in flame and blood, and organized
labor was disrupted, the socialists held their peace
and perfected their secret organization. In vain the
Grangers pleaded with us. We rightly contended that
any revolt on our part Vv^as virtually suicide for the
whole Revolution. The Iron Heel, at first dubious
about dealing with the entire proletariat at one time,
had found the work easier than it had expected, and
would have asked nothing better than an uprising on
our part. But we avoided the issue, in spite of the
fact that agents-provocateurs swarmed in our midst.
In those early days, the agents of the Iron Heel were
clumsy in their methods. They had much to learn
and in the meantime our Fighting Groups weeded them
out. It was bitter, bloody work, but we were fighting
for life and for the Revolution, and we had to fight
the enemy with its own weapons. Yet we were fair.
No agent of the Iron Heel was executed without a
trial. We may have made mistakes, but if so, very
rarely. The bravest, and the most combative and
self-sacrificing of our comrades went into the Fighting
Groups. Once, after ten years had passed, Ernest
made a calculation from figures furnished by the chiefs
of the Fighting Groups, and his conclusion was that
the average life of a man or woman after becoming a
THE END 247
member was five years. The comrades of the Fight-
ing Groups were heroes all, and the peculiar thing
about it was that they were opposed to the taking of
life. They violated their own natures, yet they loved
liberty and knew of no sacrifice too great to make for
the Cause. ^
The task we set ourselves was threefold. First,
the weeding out from our circles of the secret agents
* These Fighting groups were modelled somewhat after the Fighting
Organization of the Russian Revolution, and, despite the unceasing
efforts of the Iron Heel, these groups persisted throughout the three
centuries of its existence. Composed of men and women actuated by
lofty purpose and unafraid to die, the Fighting Groups exercised tre-
mendous influence and tempered the savage brutality of the rulers.
Not alone was their work confined to unseen warfare with the secret
agents of the Oligarchy. The oligarchs themselves were compelled
to listen to the decrees of the Groups, and often, when they disobej^ed,
were punished by death — and likewise "Rath the subordinates of the
oUgarchs, with the officers of the army and the leaders of the labor
castes.
Stern justice was meted out by these organized avengers, but
most remarkable was their passionless and judicial procedure. There
were no snap judgments. When a man was captured he was given
fair trial and opportunity for defence. Of necessit}'-, many men were
tried and condemned by proxy, as in the case of General Lampton.
This occurred in 2138 a.d. Possibly the most bloodthirsty and ma-
lignant of all the mercenaries that ever served the Iron Heel, he was
informed by the Fighting Groups that they had tried him, found him
guilty, and condemned him to death — and this, after three warnings
for him to cease from his ferocious treatment of the proletariat. After
his condemnation he surrounded himself with a myriad protective
devices. Years passed, and in vain the Fighting Groups strove to
execute their decree. Comrade after comrade, men and women,
failed in their attempts, and were cruelly executed by the Oligarchy.
It was the case of General Lampton that revived crucifixion as a legal
method of execution. But in the end the condemned man found his
executioner in the form of a slender girl of seventeen, Madeline Pro-
248 THE IRON HEEL
of the Oligarchy. Second, the organizing of the
Fighting Groups, and, outside of them, of the general
secret organization of the Revolution. And third, the
introduction of our own secret agents into every branch
of the Oligarchy — into the labor castes and especially
among the telegraphers and secretaries and clerks, into
the army, the agents-provocateurs, and the slave-
drivers. It was slow work, and perilous, and often
were our efforts rewarded with costly failures.
The Iron Heel had triumphed in open warfare, but
we held our own in the new warfare, strange and awful
and subterranean, that we instituted. All was unseen,
much was unguessed ; the blind fought the blind ; and
yet through it all was order, purpose, control. We
permeated the entire organization of the Iron Heel
with our agents, while our own organization was per-
vence, who, to accomplish her purpose, served two years in his palace
as a seamstress to the household. She died in solitary confinement
after horrible and prolonged torture ; but to-day she stands in imperish-
able bronze in the Pantheon of Brotherhood in the wonder city of Series.
We, who by personal experience know nothing of bloodshed, must
not judge harshly the heroes of the Fighting Groups. They gave up
their lives for humanity, no sacrifice was too great for them to accom-
plish, while inexorable necessity compelled them to bloody expression
in an age of blood. The Fighting Groups constituted the one thorn
in the side of the Iron Heel that the Iron Heel could never remove.
Everhard was the father of this curious armj'-, and its accomplishments
and successful persistence for three hundred years bear witness to the
wisdom with which he organized and the solid foundation he laid for
the succeeding generations to build upon. In some respects, despite
his great economic and sociological contributions, and his work as a
general leader in the Revolution, his organization of the Fighting
Groups must be regarded as his greatest achievement.
THE END 249
meated with the agents of the Iron Heel. It was war-
fare dark and devious, replete with intrigue and con-
spiracy, plot and counterplot. And behind all, ever
menacing, was death, violent and terrible. Men and
women disappeared, our nearest and dearest comrades.
We saw them to-day. To-morrow they were gone ;
we never saw them again, and we knew that they had
died.
There was no trust, no confidence anywhere. The
man who plotted beside us, for all we knew, might be
an agent of the Iron Heel. We mined the organization
of the Iron Heel with our secret agents, and the Iron
Heel countermined with its secret agents inside its
own organization. And it was the same with our
organization. And despite the absence of confidence
and trust we were compelled to base our every effort
on confidence and trust. Often were we betrayed.
Men were weak. The Iron Heel could offer money,
leisure, the joys and pleasures that waited in the repose
of the wonder cities. We could offer nothing but the
satisfaction of being faithful to a noble ideal. As for
the rest, the wages of those who were loyal were
unceasing peril, torture, and death.
Men were weak, I say, and because of their weakness
we were compelled to make the only other reward that
was within our power. It was the reward of death.
Out of necessity we had to punish our traitors. For
every man who betrayed us, from one to a dozen faith-
250 THE IRON HEEL
ful avengers were loosed upon his heels. We might
fail to carry out our decrees against our enemies, such
as the Pococks; for instance ; but the one thing we
could not afford to fail in was the punishment of our
own traitors. Comrades turned traitor by permission,
in order to win to the wonder cities and there execute
our sentences on the real traitors. In fact, so terrible
did we make ourselves, that it became a greater peril
to betray us than to remain loyal to us.
The Revolution took on largely the character of
religion. We worshipped at the shrine of the Revolu-
tion, which was the shrine of liberty. It was the divine
flashing through us. Men and women devoted their
lives to the Cause, and new-born babes were sealed to
it as of old they had been sealed to the service of God.
We were lovers of Humanity.
CHAPTER XVII
THE SCARLET LIVERY
With the destruction of the Granger states, the
Grangers in Congress disappeared. They were being
tried for high treason, and their places were taken by
the creatures of the Iron HeeL The sociahsts were in
a pitiful minority, and they knew that their end was
near. Congress and the Senate were empty pretences,
farces. Public questions were gravely debated and
passed upon according to the old forms, while in reality
all that was done was to give the stamp of constitutional
procedure to the mandates of the Oligarchy.
Ernest was in the thick of the fight when the end
came. It was in the debate on the bill to assist the
unemployed. The hard times of the preceding year
had thrust great masses of the proletariat beneath the
starvation line, and the continued and wide-reaching
disorder had but sunk them deeper. Millions of people
were starving, while the oligarchs and their supporters
were surfeiting on the surplus.^ We called these
^ The same conditions obtained in the nineteenth century a.d.,
under British rule in India. The natives died of starvation by the
million, while their rulers robbed them of the fruits of their toil and
expended it on magnificent pageants and mumbo-jumbo fooleries.
Perforce, in this enlightened age, we have much to blush for in the acts
251
252 THE IRON HEEL
wretched people the people of the abyss/ and it was
to alleviate their awful suffering that the sociahsts
had introduced the unemployed bill. But this was
not to the fancy of the Iron Heel. In its own way it
was preparing to set these millions to work, but the
way was not our way, wherefore it had issued its
orders that our bill should be voted down. Ernest and
his fellows knew that their effort was futile, but they
were tired of the suspense. They wanted something
to happen. They were accomplishing nothing, and
the best they hoped for was the putting of an end to
the legislative farce in which they were unwilling play-
ers. They knew not what end would come, but they
never anticipated a more disastrous end than the one
that did come.
I sat in the gallery that day. We all knew that some-
thing terrible was imminent. It was in the air, and
its presence was made visible by the armed soldiers
of our ancestors. Our only consolation is philosophic. We must ac-
cept the capitalistic stage in social evolution as about on a par with
the earlier monkey stage. The human had to pass through those
stages in its rise from the mire and slime of low organic life. It was
inevitable that much of the mire and slime should cling and be not
easily shaken off.
' The people of the abyss — this phrase was struck out by the genius
of H. G. Wells in the late nineteenth century a.d. Wells was a
sociological seer, sane and normal as well as warm human. Many
fragments of his work have come down to us, while two of his greatest
achievements, "Anticipations" and "Mankind in the Making,"
have come doT\Ti intact. Before the oligarchs, and before Everhard,
Wells speculated upon the building of the wonder cities, though in
bis writings they are referred to as "pleasure cities."
THE SCARLET LIVERY 253
drawn up in lines in the corridors, and by the officers
grouped in the entrances to the House itself. The
Oligarchy was about to strike. Ernest was speaking.
He was describing the sufferings of the unemployed, as
if with the wild idea of in some way touching their
hearts and consciences; but the Republican and
Democratic members sneered and jeered at him, and
there was uproar and confusion. Ernest abruptly
changed front.
''I know nothing that I may say can influence you,"
he said. ^'You have no souls to be influenced. You
are spineless, flaccid things. You pompously call
yourselves Republicans and Democrats. There is no
Republican Party. There is no Democratic Party.
There are no Republicans nor Democrats in this House.
You are lick-spittlers and panderers, the creatures of
the Plutocrac3^ You talk verbosely in antiquated
terminology of your love of liberty, and all the while
you wear the scarlet hvery of the Iron Heel."
Here the shouting and the cries of ''Order! order!"
drowned his voice, and he stood disdainfully till the
din had somewhat subsided. He waved his hand to
include all of them, turned to his own comrades, and
said :
''Listen to the bellowing of the well-fed beasts."
Pandemonium broke out again. The Speaker rapped
for order and glanced expectantly at the officers in the
doorways. There were cries of "Sedition!" and a
254 THE IRON HEEL
great, rotund New York member began shouting
"Anarchist!" at Ernest. And Ernest was not pleasant
to look at. Every fighting fibre of him was quivering,
and his face was the face of a fighting animal, withai
he was cool and collected.
"Remember," he said, in a voice that made itself
heard above the din, "that as you show mercy now to
the proletariat, some day will that same proletariat
show mercy to 3'ou."
The cries of "Sedition!" and "Anarchist!" re-
doubled.
"I know that you will not vote for this bill," Ernest
went on. "You have received the command from
your masters to vote against it. And yet you call me
anarchist. You, who have destroyed the government
of the people, and who shamelessly flaunt your scarlet
shame in public places, call me anarchist. I do not
believe in hell-fire and brim.stone ; but in moments like
this I regret my unbelief. Nay, in moments like this
I almost do believe. Surely there must be a hell, for
in no less place could it be possible for you to receive
punishment adequate to your crimes. So long as you
exist, there is a vital need for hell-fire in the Cosmos."
There was movement in the doorways. Ernest, the
Speaker, all the members turned to see.
"Why do you not call your soldiers in, Mr. Speaker,
and bid them do their work?" Ernest demanded.
"They should carry out your plan with expedition."
THE SCARLET LIVERY 255
''There are other plans afoot," was the retort.
''That is why the soldiers are present."
"Our plans, I suppose," Ernest sneered. "Assassi-
nation or something kindred."
But at the word "assassination " the uproar broke
out again. Ernest could not make himself heard, but
he remained on his feet waiting for a lull. And then it
happened. From my place in the gallery I saw nothing
except the flash of the explosion. The roar of it filled
my ears and I saw Ernest reeling and falling in a swirl
of smoke, and the soldiers rushing up all the aisles.
His comrades were on their feet, wild with anger,
capable of any violence. But Ernest steadied him-
self for a moment, and waved his arms for silence.
"It is a plot !" his voice rang out in warning to his
comrades. "Do nothing, or you will be destroyed."
Then he slowly sank down, and the soldiers reached
him. The next moment soldiers were clearing the
galleries and I saw no more.
Though he was my husband, I was not permitted'
to get to him. When I announced who I was, I wag
promptly placed under arrest. And at the same timd
were arrested all socialist Congressmen in Washington!
including the unfortunate Simpson, who lay ill with!
typhoid fever in his hotel.
The trial was prompt and brief. The men were
foredoomed. The wonder was that Ernest was not
executed. This was a blunder on the part of the
256 THE IRON HEEL
Oligarchy, and a costly one. But the Oligarchy was
too confident in those days. It was drunk with suc-
cess, and little did it dream that that small handful
of heroes had within them the power to rock it to its
foundations. To-morrow, when the Great Revolt
breaks out and all the world resounds with the tramp,
tramp of the millions, the Oligarchy will realize, and
too late, how mightily that band of heroes has grown. ^
As a revolutionist myself, as one on the inside who
knew the hopes and fears and secret plans of the revo-
lutionists, I am fitted to answer, as very few are, the
charge that they were guilty of exploding the bomb
in Congress. And I can say flatly, without qualifica-
tion or doubt of any sort, that the socialists, in Congress
^ Avis Everhard took for granted that her narrative would be read
in her own day, and so omits to mention the outcome of the trial for
high treason. Many other similar disconcerting omissions will be
noticed in the Manuscript. Fifty-two socialist Congressmen were
tried, and all were found guilty. Strange to relate, not one received
the death sentence. Everhard and eleven others, among whom were
Theodore Donnelson and Matthew Kent, received life imprisonment.
The remaining forty received sentences varying from thirty to forty-
five years; while Arthur Simpson, referred to in the Manuscript as
being ill of typhoid fever at the time of the explosion, received only
fifteen years. It is the tradition that he died of starvation in solitary
confinement, and this harsh treatment is explained as having been
caused by his uncompromising stubbornness and his fiery and tactless
hatred for aU men that served the despotism. He died in Cabanas
in Cuba, where three of his comrades were also confined. The fifty-
two socialist Congressmen were confined in military fortresses scattered
all over the United States. Thus, Du Bois and Woods were held in
Porto Rico, while Everhard and Merryweather were placed in Alca-
traz, an island in San Francisco Bay that had already seen long service
as a military prison.
THE SCARLET LIVERY 257
and out, had no hand in the affair. Who threw the
bomb we do not know, but the one thing we are abso-
lutely sure of is that we did not throw it.
On the other hand, there is evidence to show that the
Iron Heel was responsible for the act. Of course, we
cannot prove this. Our conclusion is merely presump-
tive. But here are such facts as we do know. It had
been reported to the Speaker of the House, by secret-
service agents of the government, that the socialist
Congressmen were about to resort to terroristic tactics,
and that they had decided upon the day when their
tactics would go into effect. This day was the very
day of the explosion. Wherefore the Capitol had been
packed with troops in anticipation. Since we knew
nothing about the bomb, and since a bomb actually
was exploded, and since the authorities had prepared
in advance for the explosion, it is only fair to conclude
that the Iron Heel did know. Furthermore, we charge
that the Iron Heel was guilty of the outrage, and that
the Iron Heel planned and perpetrated the outrage for
the purpose of foisting the guilt on our shoulders and
so bringing about our destruction.
From the Speaker the warning leaked out to all the
creatures in the House that wore the scarlet livery.
They knew, while Ernest was speaking, that some vio-
lent act was to be committed. And to do them justice,
they honestly believed that the act was to be com-
mitted by the socialists. At the trial, and still with
258 THE IRON HEEL
honest belief, several testified to having seen Ernest
prepare to throw the bomb, and that it exploded pre-
maturely. Of course they saw nothing of the sort.
In the fevered imagination of fear they thought they
saw, that was all.
As Ernest said at the trial : ''Does it stand to reason,
if I were going to throw a bomb, that I should elect to
throw a feeble little squib like the one that was thrown ?
There wasn't enough powder in it. It made a lot of
smoke, but hurt no one except me. It exploded right
at my feet, and yet it did not kill me. Believe me,
when I get to throwing bombs, I'll do damage. There'U
be more than smoke in my petards."
In return it was argued by the prosecution that the
weakness of the bomb was a blunder on the part of the
socialists, just as its premature explosion, caused by
Ernest's losing his nerve and dropping it, was a blunder.
And to clinch the argument, there were the several Con-
gressmen who testified to having seen Ernest fumble
and drop the bomb.
As for ourselves, not one of us knew how the bomb
was thrown. Ernest told me that the fraction of an
instant before it exploded he both heard and saw it
strike at his feet. He testified to this at the trial, but
no one believed him. Besides, the whole thing, in
popular slang, was ''cooked up." The Iron Heel had
made up its mind to destroy us, and there was no with-
standing it.
THE SCARLET LIVERY 259
There is a saying that truth will out. I have come to
doubt that saying. Nineteen years have elapsed, and
despite our untiring efforts, we have failed to find the
man who really did throw the bomb. Undoubtedly
he was some emissary of the Iron Heel, but he has
escaped detection. We have never got the slightest
clew to his identity. And now, at this late date, nothing
remains but for the affair to take its place among the
mysteries of history.^
* Avis Everhard would have had to Hve for many generations ere
she could have seen the clearing up of this particular mystery. A
little less than a hundred yeai's ago, and a little more than six hundred
years after her death, the confession of Pervaise was discovered in the
secret archives of the Vatican. It is perhaps well to tell a little some-
thing about this obscure document, which, in the main, is of interest
to the historian only.
Pervaise was an American, of French descent, who, in 1913 a.d.,
was lying in the Tombs Prison, New York City, awaiting trial for
murder. From his confession v/e learn that he was not a criminal.
He was warm-blooded, passionate, emotional. In an insane fit of
jealousy he killed liis wife — a very common act in those times. Per-
vaise was mastered by the fear of death, all of which is recounted at
length in his confession. To escape death he would have done any-
thing, and the police agents prepared him by assuring him that he
could not possibly escape conviction of murder in the first degree
when his trial came off. In those days, murder in the first degree was
a capital offence. The guilty man or woman was placed in a specially
constructed death-chair, and, under the supervision of competent phy-
sicians, was destroyed by a current of electricity. This was called
electrocution, and it was very popular during that period. Ansesthe-
Bia, as a mode of compulsory death, was not introduced until later.
This man, good at heart but with a ferocious animalism close at the
surface of his being, lying in jail and expectant of nothing less than
death, was prevailed upon by the agents of the Iron Heel to throw the
bomb in the House of Representatives. In his confession he states
explicitly that he was informed that the bomb was to be a feeble thing
and that no lives would be lost. This is directly in line with the fact
260 THE IRON HEEL
that the bomb was lightly charged, and that its explosion at Ever-
hard' s feet was not deadly.
Pervaise was smuggled into one of the galleries ostensibly closed
for repairs. He was to select the moment for the throwing of the
bomb, and he naively confesses that in his interest in Everhard' s tirade
and the general commotion raised thereby, he nearly forgot his mis-
sion.
Not only was he released from prison in reward for his deed, but
he was granted an income for life. This he did not long enjoy. In
1914 A.D., in September, he was striken with rheumatism of the heart
and lived for three days. It was then that he sent for the Cathohc
priest. Father Peter Durban, and to him made confession. So im-
portant did it seem to the priest, that he had the confession taken down
in -RTiting and sworn to. What happened after this we can only sur-
mise. The document was certainly important enough to find its way
to Rome. Powerful influences must have been brought to bear,
hence its suppression. For centuries no hint of its existence reached
the world. It was not until in the last century that Lorbia, the bril-
liant Italian scholar, stumbled upon it quite by chance during his
researches in the Vatican.
There is to-day no doubt whatever that the Iron Heel was respon-
sible for the bomb that exploded in the House of Representatives in
1913 A.D. Even though the Pervaise confession had never come to
light, no reasonable doubt could obtain; for the act in question, that
sent fifty-two Congressmen to prison, was on a par with countless
other acts committed by the oligarchs, and, before them, by the cap-
italists.
There is the classic instance of the ferocious and wanton judicial
murder of the innocent and so-called Haymarket .Anarchists in Chicago
in the penultimate decade of the nineteenth century a.d. In a cate-
gory by itself is the deliberate burning and destruction of capitalist
property by the capitalists themselves — see second footnote on page
172. For such destruction of property innocent men were frequently
punished — "railroaded" in the parlance of the times.
In the labor troubles of the first decade of the twentieth century
A.D., between the capitalists and the Western Federation of Miners,
similar but more bloody tactics were employed. The railroad station
at Independence was blown up by the agents of the capitalists. Thir-
teen men were killed, and many more were wounded. And then the
capitalists, controlling the legislative and judicial machinery of the
state of Colorado, charged the miners with the crime and came very
near to convicting them. Romaines, one of the tools in this affair,
THE SCARLET LIVERY 261
like Pervaise, was lying in jail in another state, Kansas, awaiting trial,
when he was approached by the agents of the capitalists. But, unlike
Pervaise, the confession of Romaines was made public in his own time.
Then, during this same period, there was the case of Moyer and
Haywood, two strong, fearless leaders of labor. One was president
and the other was secretary of the Western Federation of Miners. The
ex-governor of Idaho had been mysteriously murdered. The crime,
at the time, was openly charged to the mine owners by the socialists
and miners. Nevertheless, in violation of the national and state con-
stitutions, and by means of conspiracy on the parts of the governors
of Idaho and Colorado, Moyer and Haywood were kidnapped, thrown
into jail, and charged with the murder. It was this instance that pro-
voked from Eugene V. Debs, national leader of the American social-
ists at the time, the following words : " The labor leaders that cannot
he bribed nor bullied, must be ambushed and murdered. The only crime
of Moyer and Haywood is that they have been unswervingly true to the.
working class. The capitalists have stolen our country, debauched our\
politics, defiled our judiciary, and ridden over us rough-shod, and now ^
they propose to murder those who will not abjectly surrender to their\
brutal dominion. The governors of Colorado and Idaho are but execut- i
ing the mandates of their masters, the Plutocracy. The issue is the\
Workers versus the Plutocracy. If they strike the first violent blow,
we will strike the last."
CHAPTER XVIII
IN THE SHADOW OF SONOMA
Of myself, during this period, there is not much to
say. For six months I was kept in prison, though
charged with no crime. I was a suspect — a word of
fear that all revolutionists were soon to come to know.
But our own nascent secret service was beginning to
work. By the end of my second month in prison, one
of the jailers made himself known as a revolutionist
in touch with the organization. Several weeks later,
Joseph Parkhurst, the prison doctor who had just been
appointed, proved himself to be a member of one of the
Fighting Groups.
Thus, throughout the organization of the OUgarchy,
our own organization, weblike and spidery, was in-
sinuating itself. And so I was kept in touch with all
that was happening in the world without. And fur-
thermore, every one of our imprisoned leaders was in
contact with brave comrades who masqueraded in the
livery of the Iron Heel. Though Ernest lay in prison
three thousand miles away, on the Pacific Coast, I was
in unbroken communication with him, and our letters
passed regularly back and forth.
262
IN THE SHADOW OF SONOMA 263
The leaders, in prison and out, were able to discuss
and direct the campaign. It would have been pos-
sible, mthin a few months, to have effected the escape
of some of them; but since imprisonment proved no
bar to our acti\dties, it was decided to avoid anything
premature. Fifty-two Congressmen were in prison,
and fully three hundred more of our leaders. It was
planned that they should be delivered simultaneously.
If part of them escaped, the vigilance of the oligarchs
might be aroused so as to prevent the escape of the
remainder. On the other hand, it was held that a
simultaneous jail-delivery all over the land would have
immense psychological influence on the proletariat.
It would show our strength and give confidence.
So it was arranged, when I was released at the end of
six months, that I was to disappear and prepare a secure
hiding-place for Ernest. To disappear was in itself no
easy thing. No sooner did I get my freedom than my
footsteps began to be dogged by the spies of the Iron
Heel. It was necessar}'- that they should be thrown
off the track, and that I should win to CaHfornia. It
is laughable, the way this was accomplished.
Already the passport system, modelled on the Rus-
sian, was developing. I dared not cross the continent
in my own character. It was necessary that I should
be completely lost if ever I was to see Ernest again,
for by trailing me after he escaped, he would be caught
once more. Again, I could not disguise myself as a pro-
264 THE IRON HEEL
letarian and travel. There remained the disguise of a
member of the Oligarchy. While the arch-oligarchs
were no more than a handful, there were myriads of
lesser ones of the type, say, of Mr. Wickson — men,
worth a few millions, who were adherents of the arch-
oligarchs. The wives and daughters of these lesser oli-
garchs were legion, and it was decided that I should
assume the disguise of such a one. A few years later
this would have been impossible, because the passport
system was to become so perfect that no man, woman,
nor child in all the land was unregistered and unac-
counted for in his or her movements.
When the time was ripe, the spies were thrown off
my track. An hour later Avis Everhard was no more.
At that time one Felice Van Verdighan, accompanied
by two maids and a lap-dog, with another maid for the
lap-dog,^ entered a drawing-room on a Pullman,^ and
a few minutes later was speeding west.
The three maids who accompanied me were revo-
lutionists. Two were members of the Fighting Groups,
and the third, Grace Holbrook, entered a group the
following year, and six months later was executed by the
* This ridiculous picture well illustrates the heartless conduct of the
masters. While people starved, lap-dogs were waited upon by maids.
This was a serious masquerade on the part of Avis Everhard. Life and
death and the Cause were in the issue ; therefore the picture must be
accepted as a true picture. It affords a striking commentary of the
times.
' Pullman — the designation of the more luxurious raUway cars
of the period and so named from the inventor.
IN THE SHADOW OF SONOMA 265
Iron Heel. She it was who waited upon the dog. Of
the other two, Bertha Stole disappeared twelve years
later, while Anna Roylston still lives and plays an
increasingly important part in the Revolution.^
Without adventure we crossed the United States to
California. When the train stopped at Sixteenth Street
Station, in Oakland, we alighted, and there Felice Van
Verdighan, with her two maids, her lap-dog, and her
lap-dog's maid, disappeared forever. The maids,
guided by trusty comrades, were led away. Other com-
rades took charge of me. Within half an hour after
leaving the train I was on board a small fishing boat
and out on the waters of San Francisco Bay. The
winds baffled, and we drifted aimlessly the greater part
of the night. But I saw the lights of Alcatraz where
Ernest lay, and found comfort in the thought of near-
ness to him. By dawn, what with the rowing of the
fishermen, we made the Marin Islands. Here we lay
in hiding all day, and on the following night, swept on
by a flood tide and a fresh wind, we crossed San Pablo
Bay in two hours and ran up Petaluma Creek.
' Despite continual and almost inconceivable hazards, Anna
Roylston lived to the royal age of ninety-one. As the Pococks defied
the executioners of the Fighting Groups, so she defied the executioners
of the Iron Heel. She bore a charmed life and prospered amid dangers
and alarms. She herself was an executioner for the Fighting Groups,
and, known as the Red Virgin, she became one of the inspired figures
of the Revolution. When she was an old woman of sixty -nine she
shot "Bloody" Halcliflfe down in the midst of his armed escort and
got away unscathed. In the end she died peaceably of old age in a
secret refuge of the revolutionists in the Ozark mountains.
266 THE IRON HEEL
Here horses were ready and another comrade, and
without delay we were away through the starhght.
To the north I could see the loom of Sonoma Moun-
tain, toward which we rode. We left the old town of
Sonoma to the right and rode up a canyon that lay
between outlying buttresses of the mountain. The
wagon-road became a wood-road, the wood-road be-
came a cow-path, and the cow-path dwindled away
and ceased among the upland pastures. Straight over
Sonoma Mountain we rode. It was the safest route.
There was no one to mark our passing.
Dawn caught us on the northern brow, and in the gray
light we dropped down through chaparral into red-
wood canyons deep and warm with the breath of pass-
ing summer. It was old country to me that I knew and
loved, and soon I became the guide. The hiding-place
was mine. I had selected it. We let down the bars
and crossed an upland meadow. Next, we went over
a low, oak-covered ridge and descended into a smaller
meadow. Again we climbed a ridge, this time riding
under red-limbed madroiios and manzanitas of deeper
red. The first rays of the sun streamed upon our backs
as we climbed. A flight of quail thrummed off through
the thickets. A big jack-rabbit crossed our path, leap-
ing swiftly and silently like a deer. And then a deer,
a many-pronged buck, the sun flashing red-gold from
neck and shoulders, cleared the crest of the ridge before
us and was gone.
IN THE SHADOW OF SONOMA 267
We followed in his wake a space, then dropped down
a zigzag trail that he disdained into a group of noble
redwoods that stood about a pool of water murky with
minerals from the mountain side. I knew every inch
of the way. Once a writer friend of mine had owned
the ranch ; but he, too, had become a revolutionist,
though more disastrously than I, for he was already
dead and gone, and none knew where nor how. He
alone, in the days he had lived, knew the secret of the
hiding-place for which I was bound. He had bought
the ranch for beauty, and paid a round price for it,
much to the disgust of the local farmers. He used to
tell with great glee how they were wont to shake their
heads mournfully at the price, to accomplish ponder-
ously a bit of mental arithmetic, and then to say,
''But you can't make six per cent on it."
But he was dead now, nor did the ranch descend to
his children. Of all men, it was now the property of
Mr. Wickson, who owned the whole eastern and north-
ern slopes of Sonoma Mountain, running from the
Spreckels estate to the divide of Bennett Valley. Out
of it he had made a magnificent deer-park, where, over
thousands of acres of sweet slopes and glades and can-
yons, the deer ran almost in primitive wildness. The
people who had owned the soil had been driven away.
A state home for the feeble-minded had also been de-
molished to make room for the deer.
To cap it all, Wickson's hunting lodge was a quarter
268 THE IRON HEEL
of a mile from my hiding-place. This, instead of being
a danger, was an added security. We were sheltered
under the very aegis of one of the minor oligarchs.
Suspicion, by the nature of the situation, was turned
aside. The last place in the world the spies of the
Iron Heel would dream of looking for me, and for Ernest
when he joined me, was Wickson's deer-park.
We tied our horses among the redwoods at the pool.
From a cache behind a hollow rotting log my com-
panion brought out a variety of things, — a fifty-pound
sack of flour, tinned foods of all sorts, cooking utensils,
blankets, a canvas tarpaulin, books and writing ma-
terial, a great bundle of letters, a five-gallon can of
kerosene, an oil stove, and, last and most important,
a large coil of stout rope. So large was the supply of
things that a number of trips would be necessary to
carry them to the refuge.
But the refuge was very near. Taking the rope and
leading the way, I passed through a glade of tangled
vines and bushes that ran between two wooded knolls.
The glade ended abruptly at the steep bank of a stream.
It was a little stream, rising from springs, and the
hottest summer never dried it up. On every hand
were tall wooded knolls, a group of them, with all the
seeming of ha\dng been flung there from some care-
less Titan's hand. There was no bed-rock in them.
They rose from their bases hundreds of feet, and they
were composed of red volcanic earth, the famous wine-
IN THE SHADOW OF SONOMA 269
soil of Sonoma. Through these the tiny stream had
cut its deep and precipitous channel.
It was quite a scramble down to the stream bed, and,
once on the bed, we went down stream perhaps for a
hundred feet. And then we came to the great hole.
There was no warning of the existence of the hole, nor
was it a hole in the common sense of the word. One
crawled through tight-locked briers and branches, and
found oneself on the very edge, peering out and down
through a green screen. A couple of hundred feet in
length and width, it was half of that in depth. Possibly
because of some fault that had occurred when the
knolls were flung together, and certainly helped by
freakish erosion, the hole had been scooped out in the
course of centuries by the wash of water. Nowhere did
the raw earth appear. All was garmented by vege-
tation, from tiny maiden-hair and gold-back ferns to
mighty redwoods and Douglas spruces. These great
trees even sprang out from the walls of the hole. Some
leaned over at angles as great as forty-five degrees,
though the majority towered straight up from the soft
and almost perpendicular earth walls.
It was a perfect hiding-place. No one ever came
there, not even the village boys of Glen Ellen. Had
this hole existed in the bed of a canyon a mile long,
or several miles long, it would have been well known.
But this was no canyon. From beginning to end the
length of the stream was no more than five hundred
270 THE IRON HEEL
yards. Three hundred yards above the hole the stream
took its rise in a spring at the foot of a flat meadow.
A hundred yards below the hole the stream ran out
into open country, joining the main stream and flowing
across rolling and grass-covered land.
My companion took a turn of the rope around a tree,
and with me fast on the other end lowered away. In
no time I was on the bottom. And in but a short while
he had carried all the articles from the cache and
lowered them down to me. He hauled the rope up and
hid it, and before he went away called down to me a
cheerful parting.
Before I go on I want to say a word for this comrade,
John Carlson, a humble figure of the Revolution, one of
the countless faithful ones in the ranks. He worked
for Wickson, in the stables near the hunting lodge.
In fact, it was on Wickson's horses that we had ridden
over Sonoma Mountain. For nearly twenty years now
John Carlson has been custodian of the refuge. No
thought of disloyalty, I am sure, has ever entered his
mind during all that time. To betray his trust would
have been in his mind a thing undreamed. He was
phlegmatic, stolid to such a degree that one could not
but wonder how the Revolution had any meaning to
him at all. And yet love of freedom glowed sombrely
and steadily in his dim soul. In wa5'S it was indeed
good that he was not flighty and imaginative. He
never lost his head. He could obey orders, and he was
IN THE SHADOW OF SONOMA 271
neither curious nor garrulous. Once I asked how it
was that he was a revolutionist.
"When I was a young man I was a soldier/' was his
answer. "It was in Germany. There all young men
must be in the army. So I was in the army. There
was another soldier there, a young man, too. His
father was what you call an agitator, and his father was
in jail for lese majesty — what you call speaking the
truth about the Emperor. And the j'^oung man, the
son, talked with me much about people, and work, and
the robbery of the people by the capitalists. He made
me see things in new ways, and I became a socialist.
His talk was very true and good, and I have never for-
gotten. When I came to the United States I hunted
up the socialists. I became a member of a section —
that was in the day of the S. L. P. Then later, when
the split came, I joined the local of the S. P. I
was working in a livery stable in San Francisco then.
That was before the Earthquake. I have paid my dues
for twenty-two years. I am yet a member, and I yet
pay my dues, though it is very secret now. I will
always pay my dues, and when the cooperative com-
monwealth comes, I will be glad."
Left to myself, I proceeded to cook breakfast on the
oil stove and to prepare my home. Often, in the early
morning, or in the evening after dark, Carlson would
steal down to the refuge and work for a couple of hours.
At first my home was the tarpaulin. Later, a small
272 THE IRON HEEL
tent was put up. And still later, when we became as-
sured of the perfect security of the place, a small house
was erected. This house was completely hidden from
any chance eye that might peer down from the edge
of the hole. The lush vegetation of that sheltered
spot made a natural shield. Also, the house was built
against the perpendicular wall ; and in the wall itself,
shored by strong timbers, well drained and ventilated,
we excavated two small rooms. Oh, believe me, we
had many comforts. When Biedenbach, the German
terrorist, hid with us some time later, he installed a
smoke-consuming device that enabled us to sit by
crackling wood fires on winter nights.
And here I must say a word for that gentle-souled
terrorist, than whom there is no comrade in the Revo-
lution more fearfully misunderstood. Comrade Bieden-
bach did not betray the Cause. Nor was he executed
by the comrades as is commonly supposed. This
canard was circulated by the creatures of the Oligarchy.
Comrade Biedenbach was absent-minded, forgetful.
He was shot by one of our lookouts at the cave-refuge
at Carmel, through failure on his part to remember the
secret signals. It was all a sad mistake. And that he
betrayed his Fighting Group is an absolute lie. No
truer, more loyal man ever labored for the Cause. ^
* Search as we may through all the material of those times that has
come down to us, we can find no clew to the Biedenbach here referred
to. No mention is made of him anjrsvhere save in the Everhard Manu-
script.
IN THE SHADOW OF SONOMA 273
For nineteen years now the refuge that I selected has
been ahnost continuously occupied, and in all that time,
with one exception, it has never been discovered by an
outsider. And yet it was only a quarter of a mile from
Wickson's hunting-lodge, and a short mile from the
village of Glen Ellen. I was able, always, to hear the
morning and evening trains arrive and depart, and I used
to set my watch by the whistle at the brickyards.^
^ If the curious traveller will turn south from Glen Ellen, he will
find himself on a boulevard that is identical with the old county road
of seven centuries ago. A quarter of a mile from Glen Ellen, after
the second bridge is passed, to the right will be noticed a barranca that
runs like a scar across the rolling land toward a group of wooded knolls.
The barranca is the site of the ancient right of way that in the time of
private property in land ran across the holding of one Chauvet, a
French pioneer of California who came from his native country in the
fabled days of gold. The wooded knolls are the same knolls referred
to by Avis Everhard.
The Great Earthquake of 2368 a.d. broke off the side of one of
these knolls and toppled it into the hole where the Everhards made
their refuge. Since the finding of the Manuscript excavations have
been made, and the house, the two cave rooms, and all the accumu-
lated rubbish of long occupancy have been brought to light. Many
valuable relics have been found, among which, curious to relate, is
the smoke-consuming device of Biedenbach's mentioned in the narra-
tive. Students interested in such matters should read the brochure
of Arnold Bentham soon to be published.
A mile northwest from the wooded knolls brings one to the site of
Wake Robin Lodge at the junction of Wild-Water and Sonoma Creeks.
It may be noticed, in passing, that Wild- Water was originally called
Graham Creek and was so named on the early local maps. But the
later name sticks. It was at Wake Robin Lodge that Avis Everhard
later lived for short periods, when, disguised as an agent-provocateur
of the Iron Heel, she was enabled to play with impunity her part among
men and events. The official permission to occupy Wake Robin
Lodge is still on the records, signed by no less a man than Wickson,
the minor oligarch of the Manuscript.
T
CHAPTER XIX
TRANSFORMATION
j "You must make yourself over again," Ernest wrote
to me. "You must cease to be. You must become
. another woman — and not merely in the clothes you
I wear, but inside your skin under the clothes. You
must make yourself over again so that even I would not
know you — your voice, your gestures, your manner-
isms, your carriage, your walk, ever3''thing."
This command I obeyed. Every day I practised for
hours in burying forever the old Avis Everhard beneath
the skin of another woman whom I may call my other
self. It was only by long practice that such results
could be obtained. In the mere detail of voice intona-
tion I practised almost perpetually till the voice of my
new self became fixed, automatic. It was this auto-
matic assumption of a role that was considered imper-
ative. One must become so adept as to deceive one-
self. It was like learning a new language, say the
French. At first speech in French is self-conscious, a
matter of the will. The student thinks in English and
274
TRANSFORMATION 275
then transmutes into French, or reads in French but
transmutes into English before he can understand.
Then later, becoming firmly grounded, automatic, the
student reads, writes, and thinks in French, without any
recourse to English at all.
And so with our disguises. It was necessary for us
to practise until our assumed roles became real ; until
to be our original selves would require a watchful and
strong exercise of will. Of course, at first, much was
mere blundering experiment. We were creating a new
art, and we had much to discover. But the work was
going on everywhere ; masters in the art were develop-
ing, and a fund of tricks and expedients was being ac-
cumulated. This fund became a sort of text-book that
was passed on, a part of the curriculum, as it were, of
the school of Revolution.^
It was at this time that my father disappeared.
His letters, which had come to me regularly, ceased.
He no longer appeared at our Pell Street quarters.
Our comrades sought him everywhere. Through our
secret service we ransacked every prison in the land.
But he was lost as completely as if the earth had swal-
* Disguise did become a veritable art during that period. The
revolutionists maintained schools of acting in all their refuges. They
scorned accessories, such as wigs and beards, false eyebrows, and such
aids of the theatrical actors. The game of revolution was a game of
life and death, and mere accessories were traps. Disguise had to be
fundamental, intrinsic, part and parcel of one's being, second nature.
The Red Virgin is reported to have been one of the most adept in the
art, to which must be ascribed her long and successful career.
276 THE IRON HEEL
lowed him up, and to this day no clew to his end has ever
been discovered/
Six lonely months I spent in the refuge, but they were
not idle months. Our organization went on apace, and
there were mountains of work always waiting to be
done. Ernest and his fellow-leaders, from their prisons,
decided what should be done ; and it remained for us on
the outside to do it. There was the organization of the
mouth-to-mouth propaganda; the organization, with
all its ramifications, of our spy system; the establish-
ment of our secret printing-presses ; and the establish-
ment of our underground railways, which meant the
knitting together of all our myriads of places of refuge,
and the formation of new refuges where links were
missing in the chains we ran over all the land.
So I say, the work was never done. At the end of six
months my loneliness was broken by the arrival of two
comrades. They vv^ere young girls, brave souls and
passionate lovers of libert}': Lora Peterson, who dis-
appeared in 1922, and Kate Bierce, who later married
Du Bois,^ and who is still with us with eyes lifted to
to-morrow's sun, that heralds in the new age.
' Disappearance was one of the horrors of the time. As a motif,
in song and story, it constantly crops up. It was an inevitable con-
comitant of the subterranean warfare that raged through those three
centuries. This phenomenon was almost as common in the oligarch
class and the labor castes, as it was in the ranks of the revolutionists.
Without warning, without trace, men and women, and even children,
disappeared and were seen no more, their ends shrouded in mystery.
^ Du Bois, the present librarian of Ardis, is a lineal descendant
of this revolutionary pair.
TRANSFORMATION 277
The two girls arrived in a flurry of excitement, danger,
and sudden death. In the crew of the fishing boat that
conveyed them across San Pablo Bay was a spy. A
creature of the Iron Heel, he had successfully mas-
queraded as a revolutionist and penetrated deep into the
secrets of our organization. Without doubt he was on
my trail, for we had long since learned that my dis-
appearance had been cause of deep concern to the
secret service of the Oligarchy. Luckily, as the out-
come proved, he had not divulged his discoveries to
any one. He had evidently delayed reporting, pre-
ferring to wait until he had brought things to a success-
ful conclusion by discovering my hiding-place and cap-
turing me. His information died with him. Under
some pretext, after the girls had landed at Petaluma
Creek and taken to the horses, he managed to get away
from the boat.
Part way up Sonoma Mountain, John Carlson let the
girls go on, leading his horse, while he went back on
foot. His suspicions had been aroused. He captured
the spy, and as to what then happened, Carlson gave
us a fair idea.
"I fixed him," was Carlson's unimaginative way of
describing the affair. ''I fixed him," he repeated, while
a sombre light burnt in his eyes, and his huge, toil-
distorted hands opened and closed eloquently. "He
made no noise. I hid him, and to-night I will go back
and bury him deep."
278 THE IRON HEEL
During that period I used to marvel at my own
metamorphosis. At times it seemed impossible, either
that I had ever lived a placid, peaceful life in a college
town, or else that I had become a revolutionist inured to
scenes of violence and death. One or the other could
not be. One was real, the other was a dream, but which
was which? Was this present life of a revolutionist,
hiding in a hole, a nightmare ? or was I a revolutionist
who had somewhere, somehow, dreamed that in some
former existence I had lived in Berkeley and never
-known of life more violent than teas and dances, de-
bating societies, and lecture rooms? But then I sup-
pose this was a common experience of all of us who had
Irallied under the red banner of the brotherhood of man.
I often remembered figures from that other life,
and, curiously enough, they appeared and disappeared,
Qow and again, in my new life. There was Bishop
Morehouse. In vain we searched for him after our or-
ganization had developed. He had been transferred
from asylum to asylum. We traced him from the state
hospital for the insane at Napa to the one in Stockton,
and from there to the one in the Santa Clara Valley
called Agnews, and there the trail ceased. There was
no record of his death. In some way he must have
escaped. Little did I dream of the awful manner in
which I was to see him once again — the fleeting glimpse
of him in the whirlwind carnage of the Chicago Com-
mune.
TRANSFORMATION 279
Jackson, who had lost his arm. in the Sierra Mills
and who had been the cause of my own conversion into
a revolutionist, I never saw again; but we all knew
what he did before he died. He never joined the
revolutionists. Embittered by his fate, brooding over
his wrongs, he became an anarchist — not a philo-
sophic anarchist, but a mere animal, mad with hate
and lust for revenge. And well he revenged himself.
Evading the guards, in the night-time while all were
asleep, he blew the Pertonwaithe palace into atoms.
Not a soul escaped, not even the guards. And in prison,
while awaiting trial, he suffocated himself under his
blankets.
Dr. Hammerfield and Dr. Ballingford achieved quite
different fates from that of Jackson. They have been
faithful to their salt, and they have been correspond-
ingly rewarded with ecclesiastical palaces wherein they
dwell at peace with the world. Both are apologists
for the Oligarchy. Both have grown very fat. '*Dr.
Hammerfield," as Ernest once said, ''has succeeded in
modifying his metaphysics so as to give God's sanction
to the Iron Heel, and also to include much worship of
beauty and to reduce to an invisible wraith the gaseous
vertebrate described by Haeckel — the difference be-
tween Dr. Hammerfield and Dr. Ballingford being that
the latter has made the God of the oligarchs a little
more gaseous and a little less vertebrate."
Peter Donnelly, the scab foreman at the Sierra Mills
280 THE IRON HEEL
whom I encountered while investigating the case of
Jackson, was a surprise to all of us. In 1918 I was
present at a meeting of the 'Frisco Reds. Of all our
Fighting Groups this one was the most formidable,
ferocious, and merciless. It was really not a part of
our organization. Its members were fanatics, mad-
men. We dared not encourage such a spirit. On the
other hand, though they did not belong to us, we re-
mained on friendly terms with them. It was a matter
of vital importance that brought me there that night.
I, alone in the midst of a score of men, was the only
person unmasked. After the business that brought
me there was transacted, I was led away by one of
them. In a dark passage this guide struck a match,
and, holding it close to his face, slipped back his mask.
For a moment I gazed upon the passion-wrought
features of Peter Donnelly. Then the match went
out.
''I just wanted you to know it was me," he said in
the darkness. ''D'you remember Dallas, the superin-
tendent?"
I nodded at recollection of the vulpine-faced super-
intendent of the Sierra Mills.
"Well, I got him first," Donnelly said with pride.
'"Twas after that I joined the Reds."
"But how comes it that you are here?" I queried.
"Your wife and children?"
"Dead," he answered. "That's why. No," he
TRANSFORMATION 281
went on hastily, '''tis not revenge for them. They died
easily in their beds — sickness, you see, one time and
another. The}^ tied my arms while they lived. And
now that they're gone, 'tis revenge for my blasted man-
hood I'm after. I was once Peter Donnelly, the scab
foreman. But to-night I'm Number 27 of the 'Frisco
Reds. Come on now, and I'll get you out of this."
More I heard of him afterward. In his own way
he had told the truth when he said all were dead. But
one Uved, Timothy, and him his father considered dead
because he had taken service with the Iron Heel in the
Mercenaries.^ A member of the 'Frisco Reds pledged
himself to twelve annual executions. The penalty for
failure was death. A member who failed to complete
his number committed suicide. These executions wen
not haphazard. This group of madmen met frequentl} -#
and passed wholesale judgments upon offending mem-
bers and servitors of the Oligarchy. The execution^
were afterward apportioned by lot. i
In fact, the business that brought me there the night
of my visit was such a trial. One of our own comrades,
who for years had successfully maintained himself in a
* In addition to the labor castes, there arose another caste, the
military. A standing army of professional soldiers was created, offi-
cered by members of the Oligarchy and known as the Mercenaries.
This institution took the place of the militia, which had proved im-
practicable under the new regime. Outside the regular secret ser\ace
of the Iron Heel, there was further established a secret service of the
Mercenaries, this latter forming a connecting link betvv-een the police
and the military.
282 THE IRON HEEL
clerical position in the local bureau of the secret service
of the Iron Heel, had fallen under the ban of the 'Frisco
Reds and was being tried. Of course he was not pres-
ent, and of course^ his judges did not know that he was
one of our men. i My mission had been to testify to his
identity and loyalty. It may be wondered how we
came to know of the affair at all. The explanation is
simple.:,/' One of our secret agents was a member of the
C Frisco Reds. It was necessary for us to keep an eye
n friend as well as foe, and this group of madmen was
^t too unimportant to escape our surveillance.
But to return to Peter Donnelly and his son. All
went well with Donnelly until, in the following year, he
found among the sheaf of executions that fell to him
the name of Timothy Donnelly. Then it was that
that family clannishness, which was his to so extraordi-
nary a degree, asserted itself. To save his son, he be-
trayed his comrades. In this he was partially blocked,
but a dozen of the 'Frisco Reds were executed, and the
group was well-nigh destroj^ed. In retaliation, the
survivors meted out to Donnelly the death he had
earned by his treason.
Nor did Timothy Donnelly long survive. The 'Frisco
Reds pledged themselves to his execution. Every ef-
fort was made by the Oligarchy to save him. He was
transferred from one part of the country to another.
Three of the Reds lost their lives in vain efforts to get
him. The Group was composed only of men. In the
TRANSFORMATION 283
end they fell back on a woman, one of our comrades,
and none other than Anna Roylston. Our Inner Circle
forbade her, but she had ever a will of her own and dis-
dained discipline. Furthermore, she was a genius and
lovable, and we could never discipline her anyway.
She is in a class by herself and not amenable to the
ordinary standards of the revolutionists.
Despite our refusal to grant permission to do the
deed, she went on with it. Now Anna Roylston was a
fascinating woman. All she had to do was to beckon
a man to her. She broke the hearts of scores of our
young comradesT^^nd^ores of others she captured, and
by their heart-strings led into our organization. Yet
she steadfastly refused to marry. She dearly loved
children, but she held that a child of her own would
claim her from the Cause, and that it was the Cause to
which her life was devoted.
It was an easy task for Anna Roylston to win Timothy
Donnelly. Her conscience did not trouble her, for at
that very time occurred the Nashville Massacre, when
the Mercenaries, Donnelly in command, literally mur-
dered eight hundred weavers of that city. But she
did not kill Donnelly. She turned him over, a prisoner,
to the 'Frisco Reds. This happened only last year,
and now she has been renamed. The revolutionists
everywhere are calling her the ''Red Virgin."^
* It was not until the Second Revolt was crushed, that the ' Frisco
Reds flourished again. And for two generations the Group flour-
ished. Then an agent of the Iron Heel managed to become a mem-
284 THE IRON HEEL
Colonel Ingram and Colonel Van Gilbert are two
more familiar figures that I was later to encounter.
Colonel Ingram rose high in the Oligarchy and became
Minister to Germany. He was cordially detested by
the proletariat of both countries. It was in BerUn
that I met him, where, as an accredited international
spy of the Iron Heel, I was received by him and afforded
much assistance. Incidentally, I may state that in
my dual role I managed a few important things for
the Revolution.
Colonel Van Gilbert became known as "Snarling"
Van Gilbert. His important part was played in
drafting the new code after the Chicago Commune.
But before that, as trial judge, he had earned sentence
of death by his fiendish malignancy. I was one of
those that tried him and passed sentence upon him.
Anna Roylston carried out the execution.
Still another figure arises out of the old life — Jack-
son's lawyer. Least of all would I have expected again
to meet this man, Joseph Hurd. It was a strange
meeting. Late at night, two years after the Chicago
Commune, Ernest and I arrived together at the Benton
Harbor refuge. This was in Michigan, across the lake
from Chicago. We arrived just at the conclusion of the
trial of a spy. Sentence of death had been passed, and
ber, penetrated all its secrets, and brought about its total annihilation.
This occurred in 2002 a.d. The members were executed one at a time,
at intervals of three weeks, and their bodies exposed in the labor-
ghetto of San Francisco.
TRANSFORMATION 285
he was being led away. Such was the scene as we came
upon it. The next moment the wretched man had
wrenched free from his captors and flung himself at
my feet, his arms clutching me about the knees in a
vicelike grip as he prayed in a frenzy for mercy. As he
turned his agonized face up to me, I recognized him
as Joseph Hurd. Of all the terrible things I have wit-
nessed, never have I been so unnerved as by this frantic
creature's pleading for life. He was mad for life. It was
pitiable. He refused to let go of me, despite the hands
of a dozen comrades. And when at last he was dragged
shrieking away, I sank down fainting upon the floor.
It is far easier to see brave men die than to hear a
coward beg for life.^
* The Benton Harbor refuge was a catacomb, the entrance of which
was cunningly contrived by way of a well. It has been maintained in a
fair state of preservation, and the curious visitor may to-day tread
its labjrrinths to the assembly hall, where, without doubt, occurred
the scene described by Avis Everhard. Farther on are the cells where
the prisoners were confined, and the death chamber where the execu-
tions took place. Beyond is the cemetery — long, winding galleries
hewn out of the solid rock, with recesses on either hand, wherein, tier
above tier, he the revolutionists just as they were laid away by their
comrades long years agone.
CHAPTER XX
A LOST OLIGARCH
But in remembering the old life I have run ahead
of my story into the new life. The wholesale jail de-
livery did not occur until well along into 1915. Com-
plicated as it was, it was carried through without a
hitch, and as a very creditable achievement it cheered
us on in our work. From Cuba to California, out of
Gcores of jails, military prisons, and fortresses, in a single
night, we delivered fifty-one of our fifty-two Congress-
men, and in addition over three hundred other leaders.
There was not a single instance of miscarriage. Not
only did they escape, but every one of them won to the
refuges as planned. The one comrade Congressman
we did not get was Arthur Simpson, and he had already
died in Cabanas after cruel tortures.
The eighteen months that followed was perhaps the
happiest period of my life with Ernest. During that
time we were never apart. Later, when we went back
into the world, we were separated much. Not more
impatiently do I await the flame of to-morrow's re-
volt than did I that night await the coming of Ernest.
I had not seen him for so long, and the thought of a
possible hitch or error in our plans that would keep him
286
A LOST OLIGARCH 287
still in his island prison almost drove me mad. The
hours passed like ages. I was all alone. Biedenbach,
and three young men who had been living in the refuge,
were out and over the mountain, heavily armed and
prepared for anything. The refuges all over the land
were quite empty, I imagine, of comrades that night.
Just as the sky paled with the first warning of dawn,
I heard the signal from above and gave the answer.
In the darkness I almost embraced Biedenbach, who
came down first ; but_the next moment I was in Ernest's
arms. And in that moment, so complete had been my
transformation, I discovered it was only by an effort
of will that I could be the old Avis Everhard, with the
old mannerisms and smiles, phrases and intonations of
voice. It was by strong effort only that I was able to
maintain my old identity; I could not allow myself
to forget for an instant, so automatically imperative
had become the new personality I had created.
Once inside the little cabin, I saw Ernest's face in the
light. With the exception of the prison pallor, there
was no change in him — at least, not m^uch. He was
m}^ same lover-husband and hero. And yet there was
a certain ascetic lengthening of the lines of his face.
But he could well stand it, for it seemed to add a
certain nobility of refinement to the riotous excess of
life that had always marked his features. He might
have been a trifle graver than of yore, but the glint of
laughter still was in his eyes. He was twenty pounds
288 THE IRON HEEL
lighter, but in splendid physical condition. He had
kept up exercise during the whole period of confine-
ment, and his muscles were like iron. In truth, he was
in better condition than when he had entered prison.
Hours passed before his head touched pillow and I had
soothed him off to sleep. But there was no sleep for me.
I was too happy, and the fatigue of jail-breaking and
riding horseback had not been mine.
While Ernest slept, I changed my dress, arranged my
hair differently, and came back to my new automatic
self. Then, when Biedenbach and the other com-
rades awoke, with their aid I concocted a little con-
spiracy. All was ready, and we were in the cave-room
that served for kitchen and dining room when Ernest
opened the door and entered. At that moment Bie-
denbach addressed me as Mary, and I turned and an-
swered him. Then I glanced at Ernest with curious
interest, such as any young comrade might betray on
seeing for the first time so noted a hero of the Revolu-
tion. But Ernest's glance took me in and quested im-
patiently past and around the room. The next mo-
ment I was being introduced to him as Mary Holmes.
To complete the deception, an extra plate was laid,
and when we sat down to table one chair was not oc-
cupied. I could have cried out with joy as I noted
Ernest's increasing uneasiness and impatience. Finally
he could stand it no longer.
''Where's my wife?" he demanded bluntly.
A LOST OLIGARCH 289
''She is still asleep/' I answered.
It was the crucial moment. But my voice was a
strange voice, and in it he recognized nothing familiar.
The meal went on. I talked a great deal, and enthu-
siastically, as a hero-worshipper might talk, and it was
obvious that he was my hero. I rose to a climax of
enthusiasm and worship, and, before he could guess my
intention, threw my arms around his neck and kissed
him on the lips. He held me from him at arm's length
and stared about in annoyance and perplexity. The
four men greeted him with roars of laughter, and ex-
planations were made. At first he was sceptical. He
scrutinized me keenly and was half convinced, then
shook his head and would not believe. It was not
until I became the old Avis Everhard and whispered
secrets in his ear that none knew but he and Avis
Everhard, that he accepted me as his really, truly wife.
It was later in the day that he took me in his arms,
manifesting great embarrassment and claiming polyga-
mous emotions.
''You are my Avis," he said, "and you are also some
one else. You are two women, and therefore you are
my harem. At any rate, we are safe now. If the
United States becomes too hot for us, why, I have
qualified for citizenship in Turkey." ^
Life became for me very happy in the refuge. It is
true, we worked hard and for long hours ; but we worked
* At that time polygamy was still practised in Turkey.
V
290 THE IRON HEEL
together. We had each other for eighteen precious
months, and we were not lonely, for there was always
a coming and going of leaders and comrades — strange
voices from the under-world of intrigue and revolution,
bringing stranger tales of strife and war from all our
battle-line. And there was much fun and delight.
We were not mere gloomy conspirators. We toiled
hard and suffered greatly, filled the gaps in our ranks
and went on, and through all the labor and the play
and interplay of life and death we found time to laugh
and love. There were artists, scientists, scholars,
musicians, and poets among us ; and in that hole in the
ground culture was higher and finer than in the palaces
or wonder-cities of the oligarchs. In truth, many of
our comrades toiled at making beautiful those same
palaces and wonder-cities.^
Nor were we confined to the refuge itself. Often at
night we rode oVer the mountains for exercise, and we
rode on Wickson's horses. If only he knew how many
revolutionists his horses have carried ! We even went
on picnics to isolated spots we knew, where we re-
mained all day, going before dayhght and returning
after dark. Also, we used Wickson's cream and butter ; ^
* This is not braggadocio on the part of Avis Everhard. The
flower of the artistic and intellectual world were revolutionists. With
the exception of a few of the musicians and singers, and of a few of the
oligarchs, all the great creators of the period whose names have come
down to us, were revolutionists.
^ Even as late as that period, cream and butter were still crudely
extracted from cow's milk. The laboratory preparation of foods had
not yet begim.
A LOST OLIGARCH 291
and Ernest was not above shooting Wickson's quail
and rabbits, and, on occasion, his young bucks.
Indeed, it was a safe refuge. I have said that it was
discovered only once, and this brings me to the clearing
up of the mystery of the disappearance of young Wick-
son. Now that he is dead, I am free to speak. There
was a nook on the. bottom of the great hole where the
sun shone for several hours and which was hidden from
above. Here we had carried many loads of gravel from
the creek-bed, so that it was dry and warm, a pleasant
basking place ; and here, one afternoon, I was drowsing,
half asleep, over a volume of Mendenhall.^ I was so
comfortable and secure that even his flaming lyrics
failed to stir me.
I was aroused by a clod of earth striking at my feet.
Then, from above, I heard a sound of scrambling. The
next moment a young man, with a final slide down the
crumbling wall, alighted at my feet. It was Philip
Wickson, though I did not know him at the time. He
looked at me coolly and uttered a low whistle of surprise.
'^ Well," he said ; and the next moment, cap in hand,
he was saying, ''I beg your pardon. I did not expect
to find any one here."
1 In all the extant literature and documents of that period, contin-
ual reference is made to the poems of Rudolph Mendenhall. By his
comrades he was called " The Flame." He was undoubtedly a great
genius; yet, beyond weird and haunting fragments of his verse,
quoted in the vrritings of others, nothing of his has come doT\Ti to us,
He was executed by the Iron Heel in 1928 a.d.
292 THE IRON HEEL
I was not so cool. I was still a tyro so far as con-
cerned knowing how to behave in desperate circum-
stances. Later on, when I was an international spy,
I should have been less clumsy, I am sure. As it was,
I scrambled to my feet and cried out the danger call.
''Why did you do that?" he asked, looking at me
searchingly.
It was evident that he had had no suspicion of our
presence when making the descent. I recognized this
with relief.
''For what purpose do you think I did it?" I coun-
tered. I was indeed clumsy in those days.
"I don't know," he answered, shaking his head.
"Unless you've got friends about. Anyway, you've got
some explanations to make. I don't like the look of it.
You are trespassing. This is my father's land, and — "
But at that moment, Biedenbach, ever polite and
gentle, said from behind him in a low voice, "Hands up,
my young sir."
Young Wickson put his hands up first, then turned
to confront Biedenbach, who held a thirty-thirty auto-
matic rifle on him. Wickson was imperturbable.
"Oh, ho," he said, "a nest of revolutionists — and
quite a hornet's nest it would seem. Well, you won't
abide here long, I can tell j'^ou."
"Maybe you'll abide here long enough to reconsider
that statement," Biedenbach said quietly. "And in
the meanwhile I must ask you to come inside with me."
A LOST OLIGARCH 293
"Inside?" The young man was genuinely aston-
ished. "Have you a catacomb here? I have heard
of such things."
''Come on and see," Biedenbach answered with his
adorable accent.
"But it is unlawful," was the protest.
"Yes, by your law," the terrorist replied significantly.
"But by our law, believe me, it is quite lawful. You
must accustom yourself to the fact that you are in
another world than the one of oppression and brutality
in which you have lived."
"There is room for argument there," Wickson mut-
tered.
"Then stay with us and discuss it."
The young fellow laughed and followed his captor
into the house. He was led into the inner cave-room,
and one of the young comrades left to guard him, while
we discussed the situation in the kitchen.
Biedenbach, with tears in his eyes, held that Wickson
must die, and was quite relieved when we outvoted
him and his horrible proposition. On the other hand,
we could not dream of allowing the young oligarch to
depart.
"I'll tell you what to do," Ernest said. "We'll
keep him and give him an education."
"I bespeak the privilege, then, of enlightening him in
jurisprudence," Biedenbach cried.
And so a decision was laughingly reached. We
294 THE IRON HEEL
would keep Philip Wickson a prisoner and educate him
in our ethics and sociology. But in the meantime there
was work to be done. All trace of the young oligarch
must be obliterated. There were the marks he had
left when descending the crumbling wall of the hole.
This task fell to Biedenbach, and, slung on a rope from
above, he toiled cunningly for the rest of the day till
no sign remained. Back up the canyon from the lip
of the hole all marks were likewise removed. Then,
at twilight, came John Carlson, who demanded Wick-
son's shoes.
The young man did not want to give up his shoes,
and even offered to fight for them, till he felt the horse-
shoer's strength in Ernest's hands. Carlson afterward
reported several blisters and much grievous loss of skin
due to the smallness of the shoes, but he succeeded
in doing gallant work with them. Back from the lip
of the hole, where ended the young man's obliterated
trail, Carlson put on the shoes and walked away to the
left. He walked for miles, around knolls, over ridges
and through canyons, and finally covered the trail in
the running water of a creek-bed. Here he removed
the shoes, and, still hiding trail for a distance, at last
put on his own shoes. A week later Wickson got back
his shoes.
That night the hounds were out, and there was little
sleep in the refuge. Next day, time and again, the
baying hounds came down the canyon, plunged off
A LOST OLIGARCH 295
to the left on the trail Carlson had made for them, and
were lost to ear in the farther canyons high up the
mountain. And all the time our men waited in the
refuge, weapons in hand — automatic revolvers and
rifles, to say nothing of half a dozen infernal machines
of Biedenbach's manufacture. A more surprised party
of rescuers could not be imagined, had they ventured
down into our hiding-place.
I have now given the true disappearance of Philip
Wickson, one-time oligarch, and, later, comrade in the
Revolution. For we converted him in the end. His
mind was fresh and plastic, and by nature he was very
ethical. Several months later we rode him, on one
of his father's horses, over Sonoma Mountain to Peta-
luma Creek and embarked him in a small fishing-launch.
By easy stages we smuggled him along our underground
railway to the Carmel refuge.
There he remained eight months, at the end of which
time, for two reasons, he was loath to leave us. One
reason was that he had fallen in love with Anna Royl-
ston, and the other was that he had become one of us.
It was not until he became convinced of the hopeless-
ness of his love affair that he acceded to our wishes and
went back to his father. Ostensibly an oligarch until'
his death, he was in reality one of the most valuable of
our agents. Often and often has the Iron Heel been/
dumfounded by the miscarriage of its plans and opera-J
tions against us. If it but knew the number of its'
■14
296 THE IRON HEEL
own members who are our agents, it would understand.
Young Wickson never wavered in his loyalty to the
Cause. In truth, his very death was incurred by his
devotion to duty. In the great storm of 1927, while
attending a meeting of our leaders, he contracted the
pneumonia of which he died.^
^ The case of this young man was not unusual. Many young men
of the Ohgarchy, impelled by sense of right conduct, or their imagina-
tions captured by the glory of the Revolution, ethically or roman-
tically devoted their lives to it. In similar way, many sons of the
Russian nobility played their parts in the earlier and protracted revo-
lution in that country.
CHAPTER XXI
THE ROARING ABYSMAL BEAST
During the long period of our stay in the refuge,
we were kept closely in touch with what was happening
in the worid without, and we were learning thoroughly
the strength of the Oligarchy with which we were at
war. Out of the flux of transition the new institutions
were forming more definitely and taking on the appear-
ance and attributes of permanence. The oligarchs
had succeeded in devising a governmental machine, as
intricate as it was vast, that worked — and this despite
all our efforts to clog and hamper.
This was a surprise to many of the revolutionists.
They had not conceived it possible. Nevertheless the
work of the country went on. The men toiled in the
mines and fields — perforce they were no more than
slaves. As for the vital industries, everything pros-
pered. The members of the great labor castes were
contented and worked on merrily. For the first time
in their lives they knew industrial peace. No more
were they worried by slack times, strike and lockout,
and the union label. They lived in more comfortable
homes and in delightful cities of ^^heir own — delight-
297
298 THE IRON HEEL
ful compared with the slums and ghettos in which they
had formerly dwelt. They had better food to eat, less
hours of labor, more holidays, and a greater amount,
and variety of interests and pleasures. And for their
less fortunate brothers and sisters, the unfavored labor-
ers, the driven people of the abyss, they cared nothing.
An age of selfishness was dawning upon mankind. And
yet this is not altogether true. The labor castes were
honeycombed by our agents — men whose eyes saw,
beyond the belly-need, the radiant figure of liberty and
brotherhood.
Another great institution that had taken form and
was working smoothly was the Mercenaries. This
body of soldiers had been evolved out of the old regular
army and was now a million strong, to say nothing of
the colonial forces. The Mercenaries constituted a
race apart. They dwelt in cities of their own which
were practicall}'- self-governed, and they were granted
manj^ privileges. By them a large portion of the per-
plexing surplus was consumed. They were losing
all touch and sympathy with the rest of the people,
and, in fact, were developing their own class morality
and consciousness. And yet we had thousands of our
agents among them.^
^ The Mercenaries, in the last days of the Iron Heel, played an
important r61e. They constituted the balance of power in the strug-
gles between the labor castes and the oligarchs, and now to one side
and now to the other, threw their strength according to the play of
intrigue and conspiracy.
THE ROARING ABYSMAL BEAST 299
The oligarchs themselves were going through a re-
markable and, it must be confessed, unexpected de-j
velopment. As a class, they disciplined themselves.
Every member had his work to do in the world, and
this work he was compelled to do. There were no.
more idle-rich young men. Their strength was used!
to give united strength to the Oligarchy. They served
as leaders of troops and as lieutenants and captains of
industry. They found careers in applied science, and
many of them became great engineers. They went into
the multitudinous divisions of the government, took
service in the colonial possessions, and by tens of
thousands went into the various secret services.
They v/ere, I may say, apprenticed to education, to art,
to the church, to science, to literature ; and in those
fields the}^ served the important function of moulding
the thought-processes of the nation in the direction of /
the perpetuity of the Oligarchy.
They were taught, and later they in turn taught,
that what they were doing was right. They assimilated
the aristocratic idea from the moment they began, as
children, to receive impressions of the world. The
aristocratic idea was woven into the making of them
until it became bone of them and flesh of them. They
looked upon themselves as wild-animal trainers, rulers
of beasts. From beneath their feet rose always the
subterranean rumbles of revolt. Violent death ever
stalked in their midst; bomb and knife and bullet
-39'
300 THE IRON HEEL
were looked upon as so many fangs of the roaring abys-
mal beast they must dominate if humanity were to
persist. They were the saviours of humanity, and they
regarded themselves as heroic and sacrificing laborers
for the highest good.
They, as a class, believed that they alone maintained
I civilization. It was their belief that if ever they
'^^j j weakened, the great beast would ingulf them and
I everything of beauty and wonder and joy and good in
jits cavernous and slime-dripping maw. Without them,
lanarchy would reign and humanity would drop back-
iward into the primitive night out of which it had
so painfully emerged. The horrid picture of anarchy
was held always before their child's eyes until they, in
turn,' obsessed by this cultivated fear, held the picture
of anarchy before the eyes of the children that followed
them. This was the beast to be stamped upon, and
the highest duty of the aristocrat was to stamp upon
it. In short, they alone, by their unremitting toil
and sacrifice, stood between weak humanity and the
all-devouring beast; and they believed it, firmly
believed it.
f I cannot lay too great stress upon this high ethical
righteousness of the whole oligarch class. This has
f I
Deen the strength of the Iron Heel, and too many of the
3omrades have been slow or loath to realize it. Many
of them have ascribed the strength of the Iron Heel to
its system of reward and punishment. This is a mis-
THE ROARING ABYSMAL BEAST 301
take. Heaven and hell may be the prime factors of
zeal in the religion of a fanatic ; but for the great major-
ity of the religious, heaven and hell are incidental to
right and wrong. Love of the right, desire for the
right, unhappiness with anything less than the right —
in short, right conduct, is the prime factor of religion.
And so with the Oligarchy. Prisons, banishment and
degradation, honors and palaces and wonder-cities, are
all incidental. The great driving force of the oligarcIia>
is the belief that they are doing righl/. Never mind the
exceptions, and never mind the oppression and injustice
in which the Iron Heel was conceived. All is granted.
The point is that the strength of the Oligarchy to-day
lies in its satisfied conception of its own righteousness/
For that matter, the strength of the Revolution,
during these frightful twenty years, has resided in
nothing else than the sense of righteousness. In no
other way can be explained our sacrifices and martyr-
doms. For no other reason did Rudolph Mendenhall
flame out his soul for the Cause and sing his wild
swan-song that last night of life. For no other reason
^ Out of the ethical incoherency and inconsistency of capitalism,
the oligarchs emerged with a new ethics, coherent and definite, sharp
and severe as steel, the most absurd and unscientific and at the same
time the most potent ever possessed by any tyrant class. The oli-
garchs believed their ethics, in spite of the fact that biology and
evolution gave them the lie; and, because of their faith, for three
centiu*ies thej' were able to hold back the mighty tide of human
progress — a spectacle, profound, tremendous, puzzling to the meta-
physical moralist, and one that to the materialist is the cause of
many doubts and reconsiderations.
302 THE IRON HEEL
did Hurlbert die under torture, refusing to the last to
betray his comrades. For no other reason has Anna
Roylston refused blessed motherhood. For no other
reason has John Carlson been the faithful and unre-
warded custodian of the Glen Ellen Refuge. It does
not matter, young or old, man or woman, high or low,
genius or clod, go where one will among the comrades
of the Revolution, the motor-force will be found to be
a great and abiding desire for the right.
But I have run away from my narrative. Ernest
and I well understood, before we left the refuge, how
the strength of the Iron Heel was developing. The
labor castes, the Mercenaries, and the great hordes of
secret agents and police of various sorts were all
pledged to the Oligarchy. In the main, and ignoring
the loss of liberty, they were better off than they had
been. On the other hand, the great helpless mass of
the population, the people of the abyss, was sinking
into a brutish apathy of content with misery. When-
ever strong proletarians asserted their strength in the
midst of the mass, they were drawn away from the
mass by the oligarchs and given better conditions by
being made members of the labor castes or of the Mer-
cenaries. Thus discontent was lulled and the pro-
letariat robbed of its natural leaders.
■ The condition of the people of the abyss was pitiable.
f Common school education, so far as they were con-
|cerned, had ceased. They lived like beasts in great
THE ROARING ABYSMAL BEAST 303
squalid labor-ghettos, festering in misery and degrada-
tion. All their old liberties were gone. They were,
labor-slaves. Choice of work was denied them. Like-/
wise was denied them the right to move from plac'
to place, or the right to bear or possess arms. The;
were not land-serfs like the farmers. They weri
machine-serfs and labor-serfs. When unusual needs
arose for them, such as the building of the great high-
ways and air-lines, of canals, tunnels, subways, and
fortifications, levies were made on the labor-ghettos,
and tens of thousands of serfs, willy-nilly, were trans-
ported to the scene of operations. Great armies of
them are toiling now at the building of Ardis, housed in
wretched barracks where family life cannot exist, and
where decency is displaced by dull bestiality. In all
truth, there in the labor-ghettos is the roaring abysmal
beast the oligarchs fear so dreadfully — but it is the
beast of their own making. In it they will not let
the ape and tiger die.
And just now the word has gone forth that new
levies are being imposed for the building of Asgard, the
projected wonder-city that will far exceed Ardis when
the latter is completed.^ We of the Revolution will
* Ardis was completed in 1942 a.d., while Asgard was not com-
pleted until 1984 a.d. It was fifty-two years in the building, during
which time a permanent army of half a million serfs was employed.
At times these numbers swelled to over a million — without any ac-
count being taken of the hundreds of thousands of the labor castes
and the artists.
l-^i.
304 THE IRON HEEL
go on with that great work, but it will not be done by
the miserable serfs. The walls and towers and shafts
of that fair city will arise to the sound of singing, and
into its beauty and w^onder will be woven, not sighs
an.d groans, but music and laughter.
Ernest was madly impatient to be out in the world
and doing, for our ill-fated First Revolt, that mis-
carried in the Chicago Commune, was ripening fast.
Yet he possessed his soul with patience, and during the
time of his torment, when Hadly, who had been brought
for the purpose from Illinois, made him over into another
man,^ he revolved great plans in his head for the organi-
zation of the learned proletariat, and for the mainte-
nance of at least the rudiments of education amongst the
people of the abyss — all this, of course, in the event
of the First Revolt being a failure.
It was not until January, 1917, that we left the refuge.
^ Among the Revolutionists were many surgeons, and in vivisec-
tion they attained marvellous proficiency. In Avis Everhard's words,
they could literally make a man over. To them the elimination of
scars and disfigurements was a trivial detail. They changed the
features mth such microscopic care that no traces were left of their
handiwork. The nose was a favorite organ to work upon. Skin-
grafting and hair-transplanting were among their commonest de-
vices. The changes in expression they accomplished were wizard-
like. Eyes and eyebrows, lips, mouths, and ears, were radically
altered. By cunning operations on tongue, throat, larynx, and nasal
ca\aties a man's whole enunciation and manner of speech could be
changed. Desperate times give need for desperate remedies, and the
surgeons of the Revolution rose to the need. Among other things,
they could increase an adult's stature by as much as four or five inches
and decrease it by one or two inches. What they did is to-day a lost
art. We have no need for it.
THE ROARING ABYSMAL BEAST 305
i
All had been arranged. We took our place at once as ?
agents-provocateurs in the scheme of the Iron Heel, I
was supposed to be Ernest's sister. By oligarchs and
comrades on the inside who were high in authority,
place had been made for us, we were in possession of all
necessary documents, and our pasts were accounted for.
With help on the inside, this was not difficult, for in
that shadow-world of secret service identity was
nebulous. Like ghosts the agents came and went,
obeying commands, fulfilling duties, following clews,
making their reports often to officers they never saw
or cooperating with other agents they had never seen
before and would never see again.
CHAPTER XXII
THE CHICAGO COMMUNE
As agents-provocateurs, not alone were we able to
travel a great deal, but our very work threw us in
contact with the proletariat and with our comrades,
the revolutionists. Thus we were in both camps at
the same time, ostensibly serving the Iron Heel and
secretly working with all our might for the Cause.
There were many of us in the various secret services
of the Oligarchy, and despite the shakings-up and
reorganizations the secret services have undergone,
they have never been able to weed all of us out.
Ernest had largely planned the First Revolt, and the
date set had been somewhere early in the spring of 1918.
In the fall of 1917 we were not ready; much remained
to be done, and when the Revolt was precipitated, of
course it was doomed to failure. The plot of necessity
was frightfully intricate, and anything premature was
sure to destroy it. This the Iron Heel foresaw and laid
its schemes accordingly.
We had planned to strike our first blow at the nervous
system of the Oligarchy. The latter had remembered
306
THE CHICAGO COMMUNE 307
the general strike, and had guarded against the defec-
tion of the telegraphers by installing wireless stations,
in the control of the Mercenaries. We, in turn, had
countered this move. When the signal was given,
from every refuge, all over the land, and from the
cities, and towns, and barracks, devoted comrades
were to go forth and blow up the mreless stations.
Thus at the first shock would the Iron Heel be brought
to earth and lie practically dismembered.
At the same moment, other comrades were to blow
up the bridges and tunnels and disrupt the whole net-
work of railroads. Still further, other groups of com-
rades, at the signal, were to seize the officers of the
Mercenaries and the police, as well as all Oligarchs of
unusual ability or who held executive positions. Thus
would the leaders of the enemy be removed from the
field of the local battles that would inevitably be
fought all over the land.
Many things were to occur simultaneously when the
signal went forth. The Canadian and Mexican pa-
triots, who were far strongerthan the Iron Heel dreamed,
were to duplicate our tactics. Then there were com-
rades (these were the women, for the men would be
busy elsewhere) who were to post the proclamations
from our secret presses. Those of us in the higher
employ of the Iron Heel were to proceed immediately
to make confusion and anarchy in all our departments.
Inside the Mercenaries were thousands of our comrades.
308 THE IRON HEEL
Their work was to blow up the magazines and to de-
stroy the delicate mechanism of all the war machinery.
In the cities of the Mercenaries and of the labor castes
similar programmes of disruption were to be carried
out.
In short, a sudden^ colossal, stunning blow was to
be struck. Before the paralyzed Oligarchy could
recover itself, its end would have come. It would
have meant terrible times and great loss of life, but no
revolutionist hesitates at such things. Why, we even
depended much, in our plan, on the unorganized people
of the abyss. They were to be loosed on the palaces
and cities of the masters. Never mind the destruction
of life and property. Let the abysmal brute roar and
the police and Mercenaries slay. The abysmal brute
would roar anyway, and the police and Mercenaries
would slay anyway. It would merely mean that
various dangers to us were harmlessly destroying one
another. In the meantime we would be doing our
own work, largely unhampered, and gaining control
of all the machiner}-- of society.
.• Such was our plan, every detail of which had to be
' worked out in secret, and, as the day drew near, com-
; municated to more and more comrades. This was the
([ danger point, the stretching of the conspiracy. But
that danger-point was never reached. Through its
spy-system the Iron Heel got wind of the Revolt and
prepared to teach us another of its bloody lessons.
/
THE CHICAGO COMMUNE 309
Chicago was the devoted city selected for the instruc-
tion, and well were we instructed.
Chicago ^ was the ripest of all — Chicago which of
old time was the city of blood and which was to earn
anew its name. There the revolutionary spirit was
strong. Too many bitter strikes had been curbed there
in the days of capitalism for the workers to forget and
forgive. Even the labor castes of the city were alive
with revolt. Too many heads had been broken in the
early strikes. Despite their changed and favorable
conditions, their hatred for the master class had not
died. This spirit had infected the Mercenaries, of
which three regiments in particular were ready to come
over to us en masse.
Chicago had always been the storm-centre of the
conflict between labor and capital, a city of street-
battles and violent death, with a class-conscious
capitalist organization and a class-conscious work-
man organization, where, in the old days, the very
school-teachers were formed into labor unions and
affiliated with the hod-carriers and brick-layers in the
^ Chicago was the industrial inferno of the nineteenth century a.d.
A curious anecdote has come down to us of John Burns, a great Enghsh
labor leader and one time member of the British Cabinet. In Chicago,
while on a visit to the United States, he was asked by a newspaper
reporter for his opinion of that city. "Chicago," he answered, "is
a pocket edition of hell." Some time later, as he was going aboard
his steamer to sail to England, he was approached by another re-
porter, who wanted to know if he had changed his opinion of Chicago.
"Yes, I have," was his reply. "My present opinion is that hell is a
pocket edition of Chicago."
310 THE IRON HEEL
American Federation of Labor. And Chicago became
the storm-centre of the premature First Revolt.
The trouble was precipitated by the Iron Heel. It
was cleverly done. The whole population, including
the favored labor castes, was given a course of out-
rageous treatment. Promises and agreements were
broken, and most drastic punishments visited upon
even petty offenders. The people of the abyss were
tormented out of their apathy. In fact, the Iron Heel
was preparing to make the abysmal beast roar. And
hand in hand with this, in all precautionary measures
in Chicago, the Iron Heel was inconceivably careless.
Discipline was relaxed among the Mercenaries that
remained, while many regiments had been withdrawn
and sent to various parts of the country.
It did not take long to carry out this programme —
only several weeks. We of the Revolution caught
vague rumors of the state of affairs, but had nothing
definite enough for an understanding. In fact, we
thought it was a spontaneous spirit of revolt that
would require careful curbing on our part, and never
dreamed that it was deliberately manufactured — and
it had been manufactured so secretl}^, from the very
innermost circle of the Iron Heel, that we had got no
inkling. The counter-plot was an able achievement,
and ably carried out.
I was in New York when I received the order to
proceed immediately to Chicago. The man who gave
THE CHICAGO COMMUNE 311
me the order was one of the oligarchs, I could tell that
by his speech, though I did not know his name nor see
his face. His instructions were too clear for me to
make a mistake. Plainly I read between the lines that j
our plot had been discovered, that we had been counter-^
mined. The explosion was ready for the flash of pow-
der, and countless agents of the Iron Heel, including
me, either on the ground or being sent there, were to
supply that flash. I flatter myself that I maintained
my composure under the keen eye of the oligarch, but
my heart was beating madly. I could almost have
shrieked and flown at his throat with my naked hands
before his final, cold-blooded instructions were given.
Once out of his presence, I calculated the time. I
had just the moments to spare, if I were lucky, to get
in touch with some local leader before catching my train.
Guarding against being trailed, I made a rush of it for
the Emergency Hospital. Luck was with me, and I
gained access at once to comrade Galvin, the surgeon-
in-chief. I started to gasp out my information, but
he stopped me.
'^I already know," he said quietly, though his Irish
eyes were flashing. ^'I knew what you had come for.
I got the word fifteen minutes ago, and I have already
passed it along. Everything shall be done here to
keep the comrades quiet. Chicago is to be sacrificed,
but it shall be Chicago alone."
''Have you tried to get word to Chicago?" I asked.
312 THE IRON HEEL
He shook his head. '^No telegraphic communica-
tion. Chicago is shut off. It's going to be hell there."
He paused a moment, and I saw his white hands
clinch. Then he burst out :
''By God ! I wish I were going to be there !"
''There is yet a chance to stop it," I said, "if nothing
happens to the train and I can get there in time. Or
if some of the other secret-service comrades who have
learned the truth can get there in time."
"You on the inside were caught napping this time,"
he said.
I nodded my head humbly.
"It was very secret," I answered. "Only the inner
chiefs could have known up to to-day. We haven't
yet penetrated that far, so we couldn't escape being
kept in the dark. If only Ernest were here. Maybe
he is in Chicago now, and all is well."
Dr. Galvin shook his head. "The last news I heard
of him was that he had been sent to Boston or New
Haven. This secret service for the enemy must hamper
him a lot, but it's batter than lying in a refuge."
I started to go, and Galvin wrung my hand.
"Keep a stout heart," were his parting words.
"What if the First Revolt is lost? There will be a
second, and we will be wiser then. Good-by and
good luck. I don't know whether I'll ever see you
again. It's going to be hell there, but I'd give ten
years of my life for your chance to be in it."
THE CHICAGO COMMUNE 313
The Twentieth Century ^ left New York at six in the
evening, and was supposed to arrive at Chicago at
seven next morning. But it lost time that night.
We were running behind another train. Among the
travellers in my Pullman was comrade Hartman, like
mj^self in the secret service of the Iron Heel. He it
was who told me of the train that immediately preceded
us. It was an exact duplicate of our train, though it
contained no passengers. The idea was that the empty
train should receive the disaster were an attempt made
to blow up the Twentieth Century. For that matter
there were very few people on the train — only a baker's
dozen in our car.
''There must be some big men on board," Hartman
concluded. ''I noticed a private car on the rear."
Night had fallen when we made our first change of
engine, and I walked down the platform for a breath
of fresh air and to see what I could see. Through the
windows of the private car I caught a glimpse of three
men whom I recognized. Hartman was right. One
of the men was General Altendorff ; and the other two
were Mason and Vanderbold, the brains of the inner
circle of the Oligarchy's secret service.
It was a quiet moonlight night, but I tossed rest-
lessly and could not sleep. At five in the morning I
dressed and abandoned my bed.
1 This was reputed to be the fastest train in the world then. It
was quite a famous train.
314 THE IRON HEEL
I asked the maid in the dressing-room how late the
train was, and she told me two hours. She was a
mulatto woman, and I noticed that her face was hag-
gard, with great circles under the eyes, while the eyes
themselves were wide with some haunting fear.
''What is the matter?" I asked.
''Nothing, miss;, I didn't sleep well, I guess," was
her reply.
I looked at her closely, and tried her with one of our
signals. She responded, and I made sure of her.
"Something terrible is going to happen in Chicago,"
she said. "There's that f ake ^ train in front of us.
That and the troop-trains have made us late."
"Troop-trains?" I queried.
She nodded her head. "The line is thick with them.
We've been passing them all night. And they're all
heading for Chicago. And bringing them over the
air-line — that means business.
"I've a lover in Chicago," she added apologetically.
"He's one of us, and he's in the Mercenaries, and I'm
afraid for him."
Poor girl. Her lover was in one of the three disloyal
regiments.
Hartman and I had breakfast together in the dining
car, and I forced myself to eat. The sky had clouded,
and the train rushed on like a sullen thunderbolt through
the gray pall of advancing day. v^e very~iiegroes tha^
False.
■^-K^-t
THE CHICAGO COMMUNE 315
waited on us knew that something terrible was impend-
ing. Oppression sat heavily upon them ; the lightness
of their natures had ebbed out of them ; they were
slack and absent-minded in their service, and theyj
whispered gloomily to one another in the far end of"
the car next to the kitchen. Hartman was hopeless
over the situation.
''What can we do?" he demanded for the twentieth
time, with a helpless shrug of the shoulders.
He pointed out of the window. ''See, all is ready.
You can depend upon it that they're holding them like
this, thirty or forty miles outside the city, on every
road."
He had reference to troop-trains on the side-track.
The soldiers were cooking their breakfasts over fires
built on the ground beside the track, and they looked
up curiously at us as we thundered past without
slackening our terrific speed.
All was quiet as we entered Chicago. It was evident
nothing had happened yet. In the suburbs the morn-
ing papers came on board the train. There was noth-
ing in them, and yet there was much in them for those
skilled in reading between the lines that it was intended
the ordinary reader should read into the text. The
fine hand of the Iron Heel was apparent in every col-
umn. Glimmerings of weakness in the armor of the
Oligarchy were given. Of course, there was nothing
definite. It was intended that the reader should feel
316 THE IRON HEEL
his way to these glimmerings. It was cleverly done.
As fiction, those morning papers of October 27th were
masterpieces.
The local news was missing. This in itself was a
master-stroke. It shrouded Chicago in mystery, and
it suggested to the average Chicago reader that the
Oligarchy did not dare give the local news. Hints
that were untrue, of course, were given of insubordina-
tion all over the land, crudely disguised with com-
placent references to punitive measures to be taken.
There were reports of numerous wireless stations that
had been blown up, with heavy rewards offered for
the detection of the perpetrators. Of course no wire-
less stations had been blown up. Many similar out-
rages, that dovetailed with the plot of the revolution-
ists, were given. The impression to be made on the
minds of the Chicago comrades was that the general
Revolt was beginning, albeit with a confusing mis-
carriage in many details. It was impossible for one
uninformed to escape the vague yet certain feeling
that all the land was ripe for the revolt that had already
begun to break out.
It was reported that the defection of the Mercenaries
in California had become so serious that half a dozen
regiments had been disbanded and broken, and that
their members with their families had been driven from
their own city and on into the labor-ghettos. And the
California Mercenaries were in reality the most faithful
THE CHICAGO COMMUNE 317
of all to their salt ! But how was Chicago, shut off
from the rest of the world, to know ? Then there was a
ragged telegram describing an outbreak of the populace
in New York City, in which the labor castes were join-
ing, concluding with the statement (intended to be
accepted as a bluff ^) that the troops had the situation in
hand.
And as the oUgarchs had done with the morning
papers, so had they done in a thousand other ways.
These we learned afterward, as, for example, the secret
messages of the oligarchs, sent with the express purpose
of leaking to the ears of the revolutionists, that had
come over the wires, now and again, during the first
part of the night.
''I guess the Iron Heel won't need our services,"
Hartman remarked, putting down the paper he had
been reading, when the train pulled into the central
depot. ''They wasted their time sending us here.
Their plans have evidently prospered better than
they expected. Hell will break loose any second
now."
He turned and looked down the train as we ahghted.
''I thought so," he muttered. ''They dropped that
private car when the papers came aboard."
Hartman was hopelessly depressed. I tried to
cheer him up, but he ignored my effort and suddenly
began talking very hurriedly, in a low voice, as we
' AUe.
318 THE IRON HEEL
passed through the station. At first I could not under-
stand.
''I have not been sure," he was saying, ''and I have
told no one. I have been working on it for weeks,
and I cannot make sure. Watch out for Knowlton. I
suspect him. He knows the secrets of a score of our
refuges. He carries the lives of hundreds of us in his
hands, and I think he is a traitor. It's more a feeling
on my part than anything else. But I thought I
marked a change in him a short while back. There is
the danger that he has sold us out, or is going to sell us
out. I am almost sure of it. I wouldn't whisper my
suspicions to a soul, but, somehow, I don't think I'll
leave Chicago alive. Keep your eye on Knowlton.
Trap him. Find out. I don't know anything more.
It is only an intuition, and so far I have failed to find
the shghtest clew." We were just stepping out upon
the sidewalk. ''Remember," Hartman concluded ear-
nestty. "Keep your eyes upon Knowlton."
And Hartman was right. Before a month went by
Knowlton paid for his treason with his hfe. He was
formally executed by the comrades in Milwaukee.
All was quiet on the streets — too quiet. Chicago
lay dead. There was no roar and rumble of traffic.
There were not even cabs on the streets. The surface
cars and the elevated were not running. Only occa-
sionalh^, on the sidewalks, were there stray pedestrians,
and these pedestrians did not loiter. They went their
THE CHICAGO COMMUNE 319
ways with great haste and definiteness, withal there
was a curious indecision in their movements, as though
they expected the buildings to topple over on them or
the sidewalks to sink under their feet or fly up in the
air. A few gamins, however, were around, in their
eyes a suppressed eagerness in anticipation of wonder-
ful and exciting things to happen.
From somewhere, far to the south, the dull sound of
an explosion came to our ears. That was all. Then
quiet again, though the gamins had startled and lis-
tened, like young deer, at the sound. The doorways
to all the buildings were closed; the shutters to the
shops were up. But there were many police and
watchmen in evidence, and now and again automobile
patrols of the Mercenaries slipped swiftly past.
Hartman and I agreed that it was useless to report
ourselves to the local chiefs of the secret service. Our
failure so to report would be excused, we knew, in the
light of subsequent events. So we headed for the great
labor-ghetto on the South Side in the hope of getting
in contact with some of the comrades. Too late ! We
knew it. But we could not stand still and do nothing
in those ghastly, silent streets. Where was Ernest?
I was wondering. What was happening in the cities
of the labor castes and Mercenaries ? In the fortresses ?
As if in answer, a great screaming roar went up, dim
with distance, punctuated with detonation after de-
tonation.
320 THE IRON HEEL
''It's the fortresses," Hartman said. "God pity those
three regiments !"
At a crossing we noticed, in the direction of the
stockyards, a gigantic pillar of smoke. At the next
crossing several similar smoke pillars were rising sky-
ward in the direction of the West Side. Over the city
of the Mercenaries we saw a great captive war-balloon
that burst even as we looked at it, and fell in flaming
wreckage toward the earth. There was no clew to that
tragedy of the air. We could not determine whether
the balloon had been manned by comrades or enemies.
A vague sound came to our ears, like the bubbling of a
gigantic caldron a long way off, and Hartman said it
was machine-guns and automatic rifles.
And still we walked in immediate quietude. Noth-
ing was happening where we were. The police and the
automobile patrols went by, and once half a dozen fire-
engines, returning evidently from some conflagration.
A question was called to the firemen by an officer in an
automobile, and we heard one shout in reply: "No
water! They've blown up the mains!"
"We've smashed the water supply," Hartman cried
excitedly to me. "If we can do all this in a premature,
isolated, abortive attempt, what can't we do in a con-
certed, ripened effort all over the land?"
The automobile containing the officer who had asked
the question darted on. Suddenly there was a deafen-
ing roar. The machine, with its human freight, lifted
THE CHICAGO COMMUNE 321
in an upburst of smoke, and sank down a mass of
wreckage and death.
Hartman was jubilant. ''Well done! well done!"
he was repeating, over and over, in a whisper. ''The
proletariat gets its lesson to-day, but it gives one, too."
Police were running for the spot. Also, another
patrol machine had halted. As for myself, I was in a
daze. The suddenness of it was stunning. How had
it happened? I knew not how, and yet I had been
looking directly at it. So dazed was I for the moment
that I was scarcely aware of the fact that we were being
held up by the police. I abruptly saw that a policeman
was in the act of shooting Hartman. But Hartman
was cool and was giving the proper passwords. I saw
the levelled revolver hesitate, then sink down, and heard
the disgusted grunt of the policeman. He was very
angry, and was cursing the whole secret service. It was
always in the way, he was averring, while Hartman was
talking back to him and with fitting secret-service pride
explaining to him the clumsiness of the police.
The next moment I knew how it had happened.
There was quite a group about the wreck, and two men
were just lifting up the wounded officer to carry him
to the other machine. A panic seized all of them, and
they scattered in every direction, running in blind
terror, the wounded officer, roughly dropped, being
left behind. The cursing policeman alongside of me
also ran, and Hartman and I ran, too, we knew not
322 THE IRON HEEL
why, obsessed with the same blind terror to get away
from that particular spot.
Nothing really happened then, but everything was
explained. The flying men were sheepishly coming
back, but all the while their eyes were raised appre-
hensively to the many-windowed, lofty buildings that
towered like the sheer walls of a canyon on each side of
the street. From one of those countless windows the
bomb had been thrown, but which window? There
had been no second bomb, only a fear of one.
Thereafter we looked with speculative comprehension
at the windows. Any of them contained possible death.
Each building was a possible ambuscade. This was
warfare in that modern jungle, a great city. Every
street was a canyon, every building a mountain. We
had not changed much from primitive man, despite
^the war automobiles that were sliding by.
Turning a corner, we came upon a woman. She was
lying on the pavement, in a pool of blood. Hartman
bent over and examined her. As for myself, I turned
deathly sick. I was to see many dead that day, but
the total carnage was not to affect me as did this first
forlorn body lying there at my feet abandoned on the
pavement. ''Shot in the breast," was Hartman's
report. Clasped in the hollow of her arm, as a child
might be clasped, was a bundle of printed matter.
Even in death she seemed loath to part with that which
had caused her death; for when Hartman had sue-
THE CHICAGO COMMUNE 323
ceeded in withdrawing the bundle, we found that it
consisted of large printed sheets, the proclamations of
the revolutionists.
''A comrade," I said.
But Hartman only cursed the Iron Heel, and we
passed on. Often we were halted by the police and
patrols, but our passwords enabled us to proceed. No
more bombs fell from the windows, the last pedestrians
seemed to have vanished from the streets, and our
immediate quietude grew more profound ; though the
gigantic caldron continued to bubble in the distance,
dull roars of explosions came to us from all directions,
and the smoke-pillars were towering more ominously
in the heavens.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS
Suddenly a change came over the face of things.
A tingle of excitement ran along the air. Automobiles
fled past, two, three, a dozen, and from them warnings
were shouted to_jis> One of the machines swerved
wildly at high speed half a block down, and the next
moment, already left well behind it, the pavement
was torn into a great hole by a bursting bomb. We
saw the police disappearing down the cross-streets on
the run, and knew that something terrible was coming.
We could hear the rising roar of it.
"Our brave comrades are coming," Hartman said.
We could see the front of their column filling the
street from gutter to gutter, as the last war-automobile
fled past. The machine stopped for a moment just
abreast of us. A soldier leaped from it, carrying some-
thing carefully in his hands. This, with the same
care, he deposited in the gutter. Then he leaped back
to his seat and the machine dashed on, took the turn
at the corner, and was gone from sight. Hartman ran
to the gutter and stooped over the object.
''Keep back," he warned me.
324
THE PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS 325
I could see he was working rapidly with his hands.
When he returned to me the sweat was heavy on his
forehead.
''I disconnected it/' he said, ''and just in the nick
of time. The soldier was clumsy. He intended it for
our comrades, but he didn't give it enough time. It
would have exploded prematurely. Now it won't
explode at all."
Everything was happening rapidly now. Across
the street and half a block down, high up in a building,
I could see heads peering out. I had just pointed them
out to Hartman, when a sheet of flame and smoke ran
along that portion of the face of the building where the
heads had appeared, and the air was shaken by the
explosion. In places the stone facing of the building
was torn away, exposing the iron construction beneath.
The next moment similar sheets of flame and smoke
smote the front of the building across the street oppo-
site it. Between the explosions we could hear the
rattle of the automatic pistols and rifles. For several
minutes this mid-air battle continued, then died out.
It was patent that our comrades were in one building,
that Mercenaries were in the other, and that they were
fighting across the street. But we could not tell which
was which — which building contained our comrades
and which the Mercenaries.
By this time the column on the street was almost on
us. As the front of it passed under the warring build-
■ , ^
326 THE IRON HEEL
ings, both went into action again — one building
dropping bombs into the street, being attacked from
across the street, and in return replying to that attack.
Tlius we learned which building was held by our com-
rades, and they did good work, saving those in the
street from the bombs of the enemy.
Hartman gripped my arm and dragged me into a
wide entrance.
''They're not our comrades," he shouted in my ear.
The inner doors to the entrance were locked and
bolted. We could not escape. The next moment the
front of the column went by. It was not a column,
but a mob, an awful river that filled the street, the
people of the abyss, mad with drink and wrong, up at
last and roaring for the blood of their masters. I had
seen the people of the abyss before, gone through its
:' ghettos, and thought I knew it ; but I found that I
was now looking on it for the first time. Dumb apathy
had vanished. It was now dynamic — a fascinating
spectacle of dread. It surged past my vision in con-
crete waves of wrath, snarling and growling, carnivo-
rous, drunk with whiskey from pillaged w^arehouses,
drunk with hatred, drunk with lust for blood — men,
women, and children, in rags and tatters, dim ferocious
intelligences with all the godlike blotted from their
features and all the fiendlike stamped in, apes and
tigers, anaemic consumptives and great hairy beasts
of burden, wan faces from which vampire society had
THE PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS 327
sucked the juice of life, bloated forms swollen with
physical grossness and corruption, withered hags and
death's-heads bearded like patriarchs, festering youth
and festering age, faces of fiends, crooked, twisted,
misshapen monsters blasted with the ravages of disease
and all the horrors of chronic innutrition — the refuse)
and the scum of life, a raging, screaming, scree chingjT^
demoniacal horde. I
And why not ? The people of the abyss had nothing
to lose but the misery and pain of living. And to gain ?
— nothing, save one final, awful glut of vengeance.
And as I looked the thought came to me that in that
rushing stream of human lava were men, comrades and
heroes, whose mission had been to rouse the abysmal
beast and to keep the enemy occupied in coping with it.
And now a strange thing happened to me. A trans-
formation came over me. The fear of death, for myself
and for others, left me. I was strangely exalted, an-
other being in another life. Nothing mattered. The
Cause for this one time was lost, but the Cause would
be here to-morrow, the same Cause, ever fresh and ever
burning. And thereafter, in the orgy of horror that
raged through the succeeding hours, I was able to take
a calm interest. Death meant nothing, life meant
nothing. I was an interested spectator of events, and,
sometimes swept on by the rush, was myself a curious
participant. For my mind had leaped to a star-cool
altitude and grasped a passionless transvaluation of
328 THE IRON HEEL
values. Had it not done this, I know that I should
have died.
Half a mile of the mob had swept by when we were
discovered. A woman in fantastic rags, with cheeks
cavernously hollow and with narrow black eyes like
burning gimlets, caught a glimpse of Hartman and
me. She let out a shrill shriek and bore in upon us.
A section of the mob tore itself loose and surged in
after her. I can see her now, as I write these lines, a
leap in advance, her gray hair flying in thin tangled
strings, the blood dripping down her forehead from
some wound in the scalp, in her right hand a hatchet,
her left hand, lean and wrinkled, a yellow talon, gripping
the air convulsively. Hartman sprang in front of me.
This was no time for explanations. We were well
dressed, and that was enough. His fist shot out, strik-
ing the woman between her burning eyes. The impact
of the blow drove her backward, but she struck the
wall of her on-coming fellows and bounced forward
again, dazed and helpless, the brandished hatchet
falling feebly on Hartman's shoulder.
The next moment I knew not what was happening.
I was overborne by the crowd. The confined space was
filled with shrieks and yells and curses. Blows were
falling on me. Hands were ripping and tearing at my
flesh and garments. I felt that I was being torn to
pieces. I was being borne down, suffocated. Some
strong hand gripped my shoulder in the thick of the
THE PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS 329
press and was dragging fiercely at me. Between pain
and pressure I fainted. Hartman never came out of
that entrance. He had shielded me and received the
first brunt of the attack. This had saved me, for the
jam had quickly become too dense for anything more
than the mad gripping and tearing of hands,
I came to in the midst of wild movement. All about
me was the same movement. I had been caught up in
a monstrous flood that was sweeping me I knew not
whither. Fresh air was on my cheek and biting sweetly
in my lungs. Faint and dizzy, I was vaguely aware of
a strong arm around my body under the arms, and half-
lifting me and dragging me along. Feebly my own
limbs were helping me. In front of me I could see the
moving back of a man's coat. It had been slit from
top to bottom along the centre seam, and it pulsed
rhythmically, the slit opening and closing regularly
with every leap of the wearer. This phenomenon
fascinated me for a time, while my senses were coming
back to me. Next I became aware of stinging cheeks
and nose, and could feel blood dripping on my face. My
hat was gone. My hair was down and flying, and from
the stinging of the scalp I managed to recollect a hand
in the press of the entrance that had torn at my hair.
My chest and arms were bruised and aching in a score
of places.
My brain grew clearer, and I turned as I ran and
looked at the man who was holding me up. He it was
330 THE IRON HEEL
who had dragged me out and saved me. He noticed
my movement.
''It's all right !" he shouted hoarsely. ''I knew you
on the instant."
I failed to recognize him, but before I could speak
I trod upon something that was alive and that squirmed
under my foot. I was swept on by those behind and
could not look down and see, and yet I knew that it was
a woman who had fallen and who was being trampled
into the pavement by thousands of successive feet.
''It's all right," he repeated. ''I'm Garthwaite."
He was bearded and gaunt and dirty, but I succeeded
in remembering him as the stalwart youth that had
spent several months in our Glen Ellen refuge three
years before. He passed me the signals of the Iron
Heel's secret service, in token that he, too, was in its
employ.
"I'll get you out of this as soon as I can get a chance,"
he assured me. "But watch your footing. On your
life don't stumble and go down."
All things happened abruptly on that day, and with
an abruptness that was sickening the mob checked
itself. I came in violent collision with a large woman
in front of me (the man with the split coat had van-
ished), while those behind collided against me. A
devilish pandemonium reigned, — shrieks, curses, and
cries of death, while above all rose the churning rattle
of machine-guns and the put-a-put, put-a-put of rifles.
/
THE PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS 331
At first I could make out nothing. People were falling
about me right and left. The woman in front doubled
up and went down, her hands on her abdomen in a
frenzied clutch. A man was quivering against my legs
in a death-struggle.
It came to me that we were at the head of the col-
umn. Half a mile of it had disappeared — where or
how I never learned. To this day I do not know what
became of that half-mile of humanity — whether it was
blotted out by some frightful bolt of war, whether it
was scattered and destroyed piecemeal, or whether it
escaped. But there we were, at the head of the column
instead of in its middle, and we were being swept out of
life by a torrent of shrieking lead.
As soon as death had thinned the jam, Garthwaite,
still grasping my arm, led a rush of survivors into the
wide entrance of an office building. Here, at the rear,
against the doors, we were pressed by a panting, gasping
mass of creatures. For some time we remained in this
position without a change in the situation.
"I did it beautifully," Garthwaite was lamenting to
me. " Ran you right into a trap. We had a gambler's
chance in the street, but in here there is no chance at all.
It's all over but the shouting. Vive la Revolution !"
Then, what he expected, began. The Mercenaries ,
were killing without quarter. At first, the surge back,
upon us was crushing, but as the killing continued thel—T^
pressure was eased. The dead and dying went dowrt
332 THE IRON HEEL
and made room. Garthwaite put his mouth to my ear
and shouted, but in the frightful din I could not catch
what he said. He did not wait. He seized me and
threw me down. Next he dragged a dying woman over
on top of me, and, with much squeezing and shoving,
crawled in beside me and partly over me. A mound of
dead and dying began to pile up over us, and over this
mound, pawing and moaning, crept those that still
survived. But these, too, soon ceased, and a semi-
silence settled down, broken by groans and sobs and
sounds of strangulation.
I should have been crushed had it not been for Garth-
waite. As it was, it seemed inconceivable that I could
bear the weight I did and live. And yet, outside of
pain, the only feeling I possessed was one of curiosity.
How was it going to end ? What would death be like ?
Thus did I receive my red baptism in that Chicago
shambles. Prior to that, death to me had been a
theory; but ever afterward death has been a simple
fact that does not matter, it is so easy.
But the Mercenaries were not content with what they
had done. They invaded the entrance, killing the
wounded and searching out the unhurt that, like our-
selves, were playing dead. I remember one man they
dragged out of a heap, who pleaded abjectly until a
revolver shot cut him short. Then there was a woman
who charged from a heap, snarling and shooting. She
fired six shots before they got her, though what dam-
THE PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS 333
age she did we could not know. We could follow these
tragedies only by the sound. Every little while flur-
ries like this occurred, each flurry culminating in the
revolver shot that put an end to it. In the intervals we
could hear the soldiers talking and swearing as they
rummaged among the carcasses, urged on by their
officers to hurry up.
At last they went to work on our heap, and we could
feel the pressure diminish as they dragged away the
dead and wounded. Garthwaite began uttering aloud
the signals. At first he was not heard. Then he raised
his voice.
''Listen to that," we heard a soldier say. And next
the sharp voice of an officer. ''Hold on there ! Care-
ful as you go !"
Oh, that first breath of air as we were dragged out !
Garthwaite did the talking at first, but I was compelled
to undergo a brief examination to prove service with the
Iron Heel.
"Agents-provocateurs all right," was the officer's
conclusion. He was a beardless young fellow, a cadet,
evidently, of some great oligarch family.
"It's a hell of a job," Garthwaite grumbled. "I'm
going to try and resign and get into the army. You
fellows have a snap."
"You've earned it," was the young officer's answer.
"I've got some pull, and I'll see if it can be managed.
I can tell them how I found you."
334 THE IRON HEEL
He took Garthwaite's name and number, then turned
to me.
''And you?"
''Oh, I'm going to be married," I answered lightly,
"and then I'll be out of it all."
And so we talked, while the killing of the wounded
went on. It is all a dream, now, as I look back on it ;
but at the time it was the most natural thing in the
world. Garthwaite and the young officer fell into an
animated conversation over the difference between so-
called modern warfare and the presenjb^reet;-figliting
and sky-scraper fighting that was taking place all over
I the city. I followed them intently, fixing up my hair
at the same time and pinning together my torn skirts.
And all the time the killing of the wounded went on.
^ Sometimes the revolver shots drowned the voices of
Garthwaite and the officer, and they were compelled
to repeat what they had been saying.
I lived through three days of the Chicago Commune,
and the vastness of it and of the slaughter may be im-
agined when I say that in all that time I saw practically
nothing outside the killing of the people of the abyss
and the mid-air fighting between sky-scrapers. I really
saw nothing of the heroic work done by the comrades.
I could hear the explosions of their mines and bombs,
and see the smoke of their conflagrations, and that was
all. The mid-air part of one great deed I saw, however,
and that was the balloon attacks made by our com-
THE PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS 335
rades on the fortresses. That was on the second day.
The three disloyal regiments had been destroyed in
the fortresses to the last man. The fortresses were
crowded with Mercenaries, the wind blew in the right
direction, and up went our balloons from one of the
office buildings in the city.
Now Biedenbach, after he left Glen Ellen, had in-
vented a most powerful explosive — ''expedite" he
called it. This was the weapon the balloons used. They
were only hot-air balloons, clumsily and hastily made,
but they did the work. I saw it all from the top of an
office building. The first balloon missed the fortresses
completely and disappeared into the country; but we
learned about it afterward. Burton and O'Sullivan
were in it. As they were descending they swept across
a railroad directly over a troop-train that was heading
at full speed for Chicago. They dropped their whole
supply of expedite upon the locomotive. The result-
ing wreck tied the line up for days. And the best
of it was that, released from the weight of expedite,
the balloon shot up into the air and did not come down
for half a dozen miles, both heroes escaping unharmed.
The second balloon was a failure. Its flight was lame.
It floated too low and was shot fuU of holes before it
could reach the fortresses. Herford and Guinness were
in it, and they were blown to pieces along with the
field into which they fell. Biedenbach was in despair —
we heard aU about it afterward — and he went up alone
336 THE IRON HEEL
in the third balloon. He, too, made a low flight, but
he was in luck, for they failed seriously to puncture his
balloon. I can see it now as I did then, from the lofty
top of the building — that inflated bag drifting along
the air, and that tiny speck of a man clinging on be-
neath. I could not see the fortress, but those on the
roof with me said he was directly over it. I did not
see the expedite fall when he cut it loose. But I did
see the balloon suddenly leap up into the sky. An
appreciable time after that the great column of the
explosion towered in the air, and after that, in turn, I
heard the roar of it. Biedenbach the gentle had de-
stroyed a fortress. Two other balloons followed at the
same time. One was blown to pieces in the air, the
expedite exploding, and the shock of it disrupted the
second balloon, which fell prettily into the remaining
fortress. It couldn't have been better planned, though
the two comrades in it sacrificed their lives.
But to return to the people of the abyss. My ex-
periences were confined to them. They raged and
slaughtered and destroyed all over the city proper,
and were in turn destroyed; but never once did they
succeed in reaching the city of the oligarchs over on
the west side. The oligarchs had protected themselves
well. No matter what destruction was wreaked in the
heart of the city, they, and their womenkind and chil-
dren, were to escape hurt. I am told that their chil-
dren played in the parks during those terrible days and
THE PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS 337
that their favorite game was an imitation of their elders
stamping upon the proletariat.
But the Mercenaries found it no easy task to cope
with the people of the abyss and at the same time fight
with the comrades. Chicago was true to her tradi-
tions, and though a generation of revolutionists was
wiped out; it took along with it pretty close to a gen-
eration of its enemies. j Of course, the Iron Heel kept
the figures secret, but, at a very conservative estimate,
at least one hundred and thirty thousand Mercenaries
were slain. But the comrades had no chance. Instead
of the whole country being hand in hand in revolt, they
were all alone, and the total strength of the Oligarchy
could have been directed against them if necessary.
As it was, hour after hour, day after day, in endless
train-loads, by hundreds of thousands, the Mercenaries
were hurled into Chicago.
And there were so many of the people of the abyss !
Tiring of the slaughter, a great herding movement was
begun by the soldiers, the intent of which was to drive
the street mobs, like cattle, into Lake Michigan. It
was at the beginning of this movement that Garthwaite
and I had encountered the young officer. This herd-
ing movement was practically a failure, thanks to the
splendid work of the comrades. Instead of the great <
host the Mercenaries had hoped to gather together, theyj^^^
succeeded in driving no more than forty thousand of ,-
the wretches into the lake. Time and again, when ai
338 THE IRON HEEL
mob of them was well in hand and being driven along
the streets to the water, the comrades would create a
diversion, and the mob would escape through the
consequent hole torn in the encircling net.
Garthwaite and I saw an example of this shortly
after meeting with the young officer. The mob of
which we had been a part, and which had been put in
retreat, was prevented from escaping to the south and
east by strong bodies of troops.,' The troops we had
fallen in with had held it back on the west. The only
outlet was north, and north it went toward the lake,
driven on from east and west and south by machine-gun
fire and automatics. Whether it divined that it was
being driven toward the lake, or whether it was merely
a blind squirm of the monster, I do not know ; but at
any rate the mob took a cross street to the west, turned
down the next street, and came back upon its track,
heading south toward the great ghetto.
Garthwaite and I at that time were trying to make
our way westward to get out of the territory of street-
fighting, and we were caught right in the thick of it
again. As we came to the corner we saw the howhng
mob bearing down upon us. Garthwaite seized my
arm and we were just starting to run, when he dragged
me back from in front of the wheels of half a dozen war
automobiles, equipped with machine-guns, that were
rushing for the spot. Behind them came the soldiers
with their automatic rifles. By the time they took
THE PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS 339
position, the mob was upon them, and it looked as
though they would be overwhelmed before they could
get into action.
Here and there a soldier was discharging his rifle,
but this scattered fire had no effect in checking the mob.
On it came, bellowing with brute rage. It seemed the
machine-guns could not get started. The automobiles
on which they were mounted blocked the street, com-
pelling the soldiers to find positions in, between, and on
the sidewalks. More and more soldiers were arriving,
and in the jam we were unable to get away. Garth-
waite held me by the arm, and we pressed close against
the front of a building.
The mob was no more than twenty-five feet away
when the machine-guns opened up ; but before that
flaming sheet of death nothing could live. The mob
came on, but it could not advance. It piled up in a
heap, a mound, a huge and growing wave of dead and^
dying. Those behind urged on, and the column, from\
gutter to gutter, telescoped upon itself. Wounded \
creatures, men and women, were vomited over the top
of that awful wave and fell squirming down the face-
of it till they threshed about under the automobiles
and against the legs of the soldiers. The latter bayo-
neted the struggling wretches, though one I saw who
gained his feet and flew at a soldier's throat with his
teeth. Together they went down, soldier and slave,
into the welter.
:/•
340 THE IRON HEEL
The firing ceased. The work was done. The mob
had been stopped in its wild attempt to break through.
Orders were being given to clear the wheels of the war-
machines. They could not advance over that wave of
dead, and the idea was to run them down the cross
street. The soldiers were dragging the bodies away
from the wheels when it happened. We learned after-
ward how it happened. A block distant a hundred of
our comrades had been holding a building. Across
roofs and through buildings they made their way, till
they found themselves looking down upon the close-
packed soldiers. Then it was counter-massacre.
Without warning, a shower of bombs fell from the
top of the building. The automobiles were blown to
fragments, along with many soldiers. We, with the
survivors, swept back in mad retreat. Half a block
down another building opened fire on us. As the sol-
diers had carpeted the street with dead slaves, so, in
turn, did they themselves become carpet. Garthwaite
and I bore charmed lives. As we had done before,
so again we sought shelter in an entrance. But he
was not to be caught napping this time. As the roar
of the bombs died away, he began peering out.
''The mob's coming back!" he called to me.
"We've got to get out of this!"
We fled, hand in hand, down the bloody pavement,
slipping and shding, and making for the corner. Down
the cross street we could see a few soldiers still running.
THE PEOPLE OF THE ABYSS 341
Nothing was happening to them. The way was clear.
So we paused a moment and looked back. The mob
came on slowly. It was busy arming itself with the
rifles of the slain and killing the wounded. We saw
the end of the young officer who had rescued us. He
painfully lifted himself on his elbow and turned loose
with his automatic pistol.
''There goes my chance of promotion," Garthwaite
laughed, as a woman bore down on the wounded man,
brandishing a butcher's cleaver. ''Come on. It's
the wrong direction, but we'll get out somehow."
And we fled eastward through the quiet streets, pre-
pared at every cross street for anything to happen. To
the south a monster conflagration was filling the sky,
.and we knew that the great ghetto was burning. At
last I sank down on the sidewalk. I was exhausted
and could go no farther. I was bruised and sore and
aching in every limb ; yet I could not escape smiling at
Garthwaite, who was rolling a cigarette and saying:
"I know I'm making a mess of rescuing you, but I
can't get head nor tail of the situation. It's all a mess.
Every time we try to break out, something happens and
we're turned back. We're only a couple of blocks now
from where I got you out of that entrance. Friend and
foe are all mixed up. It's chaos. You can't tell who
is in those darned buildings. Try to find out, and you
get a bomb on your head. Try to go peaceably on your
way, and you run into a mob and are killed by machine-
342 THE IRON HEEL
guns, or you run into the Mercenaries and are killed
by your own comrades from a roof. And on the top
of it all the mob comes along and kills you, too."
He shook his head dolefully, lighted his cigarette,
and sat down beside me.
''And I'm that hungry," he added, ''I could eat cob-
blestones."
The next moment he was on his feet again and out
in the street prying up a cobblestone. He came back
with it and assaulted the window of a store behind us.
''It's ground floor and no good," he explained as he
helped me through the hole he had made; "but it's
the best we can do. You get a nap and I'll reconnoitre.
I'll finish this rescue all right, but I want time, time,
lots of it — and something to eat."
It was a harness store we found ourselves in, and he
fixed me up a couch of horse blankets in the private
office well to the rear. To add to my wretchedness a
splitting headache was coming on, and I was only too
glad to close my eyes and try to sleep.
"I'll be back," were his parting words. "I don't
hope to get an auto, but I'll surely bring some grub,*
anyway."
And that was the last I saw of Garthwaite for three
years. Instead of coming back, he was carried away
to a hospital with a bullet through his lungs and another
through the fleshy part of his neck.
1 Food.
CHAPTER XXIV
NIGHTMARE
I HAD not closed my eyes the night before on the
Twentieth Century, and what of that and of my ex-
haustion I slept soundly. When I first awoke, it was
night. Garthwaite had not returned. I had lost my
watch and had no idea of the time. As I lay with my
eyes closed, I heard the same dull sound of distant ex-
plosions. The inferno was still raging. I crept through
the store to the front. The reflection from the sky
of vast conflagrations made the street almost as light
as day. One could have read the finest print with ease.
From several blocks away came the crackle of small
hand-bombs and the churning of machine-guns, and
from a long way off came a long series of heavy explo-
sions. I crept back to my horse blankets and slept
again.
When next I awoke, a sickly yellow light was filtering
in on me. It was dawn of the second day. I crept
to the front of the store. A smoke pall, shot through
with lurid gleams, filled the sky. Down the opposite
343
344 THE IRON HEEL
side of the street tottered a wretched slave. One hand
he held tightly against his side, and behind him he left
a bloody trail. His eyes roved everywhere, and they
were filled with aiDprehension and dread. Once he
looked straight across at me, and in his face was all the
dumb pathos of the wounded and hunted animal. He
saw me, but there was no kinship between us, and with
him, at least, no sj^mpathy of understanding ; for he
cowered perceptibly and dragged himself on. He could
expect no aid in all God's world. He was a helot in
the great hunt of helots that the masters were making.
All he could hope for, all he sought, was some hole to
crawl away in and hide like any animal. The sharp
clang of a passing ambulance at the corner gave him a
start. Ambulances were not for such as he. With
a groan of pain he threw himself into a doorway. A
minute later he was out again and desperately hobbling
on.
I went back to my horse blankets and waited an hour
for Garthwaite. My headache had not gone away.
On the contrary, it was increasing. It was by an effort
of will only that I was able to open my eyes and look
at objects. And with the opening of my eyes and the
looking came intolerable torment. Also, a great pulse
was beating in my brain. Weak and reeling, I went
out through the broken window and down the street,
seeking to escape, instinctively and gropingly, from
the awful shambles. And thereafter I lived nightmare.
NIGHTMARE 345
My memory of what happened in the succeeding hours
is the memory one would have of nightmare. Many
events are focussed sharply on my brain, but between
these indelible pictures I retain are intervals of uncon-
sciousness. What occurred in those intervals I know
not, and never shall know.
I remember stumbling at the corner over the legs of
a man. It was the poor hunted wretch that had
dragged himself past my hiding-place. How distinctly
do I remember his poor, pitiful, gnarled hands as he lay
there on the pavement — hands that were more hoof and
claw than hands, all twisted and distorted by the toij
of all his days, with on the jDalms a horny growtli
of callous a half inch thick. And as I picked myself
up and started on, I looked into the face of the thing
and saw that it still lived ; for the eyes, dimly intellir
gent, were looking at me and seeing me. )
After that came a kindly blank. I knew nothing,
saw nothing, merely tottered on in my quest for safety.
My next nightmare vision was a quiet street of the
dead. I came upon it abruptly, as a wanderer in the
country would come upon a flowing stream. Only this
stream I gazed upon did not flow. It was congealed
in death. From pavement to pavement, and covering
the sidewalks, it lay there, spread out quite evenly,
with only here and there a lump or mound of bodies
to break the surface. Poor driven people of the abyss,
hunted helots — they lay there as the rabbits in Call-
346 THE IRON HEEL
fornia after a drive.* Up the street and down I looked.
There was no movement, no sound. The quiet build-
ings looked down upon the scene from their many win-
dows. And once, and once only, I saw an arm that
moved in that dead stream. I swear I saw it move,
with a strange writhing gesture of agony, and with it
lifted a head, gory with nameless horror, that gibbered
at me and then lay down again and moved no more.
I remember another street, with quiet buildings on
either side, and the panic that smote me into conscious-
ness as again I saw the people of the abyss, but this time
in a stream that jQowed and came on. And then I saw
there was nothing to fear. The stream moved slowly,
while from it arose groans and lamentations, cursings,
babblings of senility, hysteria, and insanity ; for these
were the very young and the very old, the feeble and the
sick, the helpl<ess and the hopeless, all the wreckage
^f^the ghetto. V. The burning of the great ghetto on the
South Side had driven them forth into the inferno of
the street-fighting, and whither they wended and what-
ever became of them I did not know and never learned.^
* In those days, so sparsely populated was the land that wild ani-
mals often became pests. In California the custom of rabbit-driving
obtained. On a given day all the farmers in a locality would assemble
and sweep across the country in converging lines, dri\dng the rabbits
by scores of thousands into a prepared enclosure, where they were
clubbed to death by men and boys.
^ It was long a question of debate, whether the burning of the South
Side ghetto was accidental, or whether it was dbne by the Mercenaries;
but it is definitely settled now that the ghetto was fired by the Mer-
cenaries under orders from their chiefs.
NIGHTINIARE 347
I have faint memories of breaking a window and
hiding in some shop to escape a street mob that was
pursued by soldiers. Also, a bomb burst near me,
once, in some still street, where, look as I would, up
and down, I could see no human being. But my next
sharp recollection begins with the crack of a rifle and an
abrupt becoming aware that I am being fired at by a
soldier in an automobile. The shot missed, and the
next moment I was screaming and motioning the sig-
nals. My memory of riding in the automobile is very
hazy, though this ride, in turn, is broken by one vivid
picture. The crack of the rifle of the soldier sitting
beside me made me open my eyes, and I saw George
Milford, whom I had known in the Pell Street days,
sinking slowly down to the sidewalk. Even as he sank
the soldier fired again, and Milford doubled in, then
flung his body out, and fell sprawling. The soldier
chuckled, and the automobile sped on.
The next I knew after that I was awakened out of
a sound sleep by a man who walked up and down close
beside me. His face was drawn and strained, and the
sweat rolled down his nose from his forehead. One
hand was clutched tightly against his chest by the
other hand, and blood dripped down upon the floor as
he walked. He wore the uniform of the Mercenaries.
From without, as through thick walls, came the muffled
roar of bursting bombs. I was in some building that
was locked in combat with some other building.
348 THE IRON HEEL
A surgeon came in to dress the wounded soldier, and
I learned that it was two in the afternoon. My head-
ache was no better, and the surgeon paused from his
work long enough to give me a powerful drug that would
depress the heart and bring relief. I slept again, and
the next I knew I was on top of the building. The
immediate fighting had ceased, and I was watching the
balloon attack on the fortresses. jSome one had an
arm Ufound me and I was leaning close against him.
It came to me quite as a matter of course that this was
Ernest, and I found m5^self wondering how he had got
his hair and eyebrows so badly singed.
It was by the merest chance that we had found each
: other in that terrible city. He had had no idea that
'"^ 1 had left New York, and, coming through the room
where I lay asleep, could not at first believe that it was
J. Little more I saw of the Chicago Commune. After
watching the balloon attack, Ernest took me down
into the heart of the building, where I slept the after-
noon out and the night. The third day we spent in the
building, and on the fourth, Ernest having got per-
mission and an automobile from the authorities, we
left Chicago.
My headache was gone, but, body and soul, I was very
tired. I lay back against Ernest in the automobile,
and with apathetic eyes watched the soldiers trying
to get the machine out of the city. Fighting was still
going on, but only in isolated localities. Here and
NIGHTMARE 349
there whole districts were still in possession of the com-
rades, but such districts were surrounded and guarded
by heavy bodies of troops. In a hundred segregated
traps were the comrades thus held while the work of
subjugating them went on. Subjugation meant death,
for no quarter was given, and they fought heroically
to the last man.^
Whenever we approached such localities, the guards
turned us back and sent us around. Once, the only
way past two strong positions of the comrades was
through a burnt section that lay between. From either
side we could hear the rattle and roar of war, while the
automobile picked its way through smoking ruins and
tottering walls. Often the streets were blocked by
mountains of debris that compelled us to go around.
We were in a labyrinth of ruin, and our progress was
slow.
The stockyards (ghetto, plant, and everything) were
smouldering ruins. Far off to the right a wide smoke
haze dimmed the sky, — the town of Pullman, the sol-
dier chauffeur told us, or what had been the town of
Pullman, for it was utterly destroyed. He had driven
* Numbers of the buildings held out over a week, while one held
out eleven days. Each building had to be stormed like a fort, and the
Mercenaries fought their way upward floor by floor. It was deadly
fighting. Quarter was neither given nor taken, and in the fighting
the revolutionists had the advantage of being above. While the revo-
lutionists were wiped out, the loss was not one-sided. The proud
Chicago proletariat lived up to its ancient boast. For as many of itself
as were killed, it killed that many of the enemy.
350 THE mOX HEEL
the machine out there, with despatches, on the after-
noon of the third day. Some of the heaviest fighting
had occurred there, he said, many of the streets being
rendered impassable by the heaps of the dead.
Swinging around the shattered walls of a building,
in the stockyards district, the automobile was stopped
by a wave of dead. It was for all the world like a
wave tossed up by the sea. It was patent to us what
had happened. As the mob charged past the corner,
it had been swept, at right angles and point-blank
range, by the machine-guns drawn up on the cross
street. But disaster had come to the soldiers. A
chance bomb must have exploded among them, for
the mob, checked until its dead and dying formed the
wave, had white-capped and flung forward its foam
of living, fighting slaves. Soldiers and slaves lay to-
gether, torn and mangled, around and over the wreck-
age of the automobiles and guns.
Ernest sprang out. A familiar pair of shoulders in
a cotton shirt and a familiar fringe of white hair had
caught his eye. I did not watch him, and it was not
until he was back beside me and we were speeding
on that he said :
''It was Bishop Morehouse."
Soon we were in the green country, and I took one
last glance back at the smoke-filled sky. Faint and
far came the low thud of an explosion. Then I turned
my face against Ernest's breast and wept softly for
NIGHTMARE 351
the Cause that was lost. Ernest's arm about me was
eloquent with love.
''For this time lost, dear heart," he said, ''but not/
forever. We have learned. To-morrow the Cause will
rise again, strong with wisdom and discipline." •;
The automobile drew up at a railroad station. Here:
we would catch a train to New York. As we waited
on the platform, three trains thundered past, bound
west to Chicago. They were crowded with ragged,-
unskilled laborers, people of the abyss. i
"Slave-levies for the rebuilding of Chicago," Ernest|
said. "You see, the Chicago slaves are all killed." \
CHAPTER XXV
THE TERRORISTS
It was not until Ernest and I were back in New York,
and after weeks had elapsed, that we were able to
comprehend thoroughly the full sweep of the disaster
that had befallen the Cause. The situation was bitter
^and bloody. In many places, scattered over the coun-
jtry, slave revolts and massacres had occurred. The roll
I of the martyrs increased mightily. Countless execu-
Jtions took place everywhere. The mountains and waste
pgions were filled with outlaws and refugees who were
/being hunted down mercilessly. Our own refuges
were packed with comrades who had prices on their
heads. Through information furnished by its spies,
' scores of our refuges were raided by the soldiers of the
Iron Heel.
Many of the comrades were disheartened, and they
"; retaliated with terroristic tactics. The set-back to
their hopes made them despairing and desperate.
Many terrorist organizations unaffiliated with us
352
THE TERRORISTS 353
sprang into existence and caused us much troubler"^
These misguided people sacrificed their own lives
wantonly, very often made our own plans go astray,
and retarded our organization.
And through it all moved the Iron Heel, impassive
and deliberate, shaking up the whole fabric of the social
structure in its search for the comrades, combing out
the Mercenaries, the labor castes, and all its secret
services, punishing without mercy and without malice,
suffering in silence all retaliations that were made upon
it, and filling the gaps in its fighting line as fast as they
appeared. And hand in hand with this, Ernest and
the other leaders were hard at work reorganizing the
* The annals of this short-lived era of despair make bloody reading.
Revenge was the ruling motive, and the members of the terroristic
organizations were careless of their own lives and hopeless about the
future. The Danites, taking their name from the avenging angels of
the Mormon mythology, sprang up in the mountains of the Great
West and spread over the Pacific Coast from Panama to Alaska.
The Valkyries were women. They were the most terrible of all. No
woman was eligible for membership who had not lost near relatives
at the hands of the Oligarchy. They were guilty of torturing their
prisoners to death. Another famous organization of women was The
Widows of War. A companion organization to the Valkyries was the
Berserkers. These men placed no value whatever upon their own
lives, and it was they who totally destroyed the great Mercenary
city of Bellona along with its population of over a hundred thousand
souls. The Bedlamites and the Helldamites were twin slave organiza-
tions, while a new religious sect that did not flourish long was called
The Wrath of God. Among others, to show the whimsicality of their
deadly seriousness, may be mentioned the following: The Bleeding
Hearts, Sons of the Morning, the Morning Stars, The Flamingoes,
The Triple Triangles, The Three Bars, The Rubonics, The Vindicators,
The Comanches. and The Erebusites.
2a
354 THE IRON HEEL
forces of the Revolution. The magnitude of the task
i^ay be understood when it is taken into ^
j ' This is the end of the Everhard Manuscript. It breaks off
aljruptly in the middle of a sentence. She must have received warning
of the coming of the Mercenaries, for she had time safely to hide the
Manuscript before she fled or was captured. It is to be regretted that
she did not live to complete her narrative, for then, undoubtedly,
would have been cleared away the mystery that has shrouded for
seven centuries the execution of Ernest Everhard.
JACK LONDON'S SHORT STORIEJ
Children of the Frost
"Told with something of that same vigorous and honest manliness
and indifference with which Mr. Kipling makes unbegging yet direct
and unfailing appeal to the sympathy of his reader." — Richmond
Dispatch,
Illustrations by Raphael M. Reay. Cloth, i2mo, $ i.jo
The Faith of Men
" Mr. London's art as a story-teller nowhere manifests itself more
strongly than in the swift, dramatic close of his stories. There is no
hesitancy or uncertainty of touch. From the start the story moves
straight to the inevitable conclusion." — Cotirier Journal.
Cloth, i2mo, $1.50
Moon Face
" Each of the stories is unique in its individual way, weird and un-
canny, and told in Mr. London's vigorous, compelling style."
— Interior.
Illustrated, cloth, i2mo, $1.50
Tales of the Fish Patrol
" That they are vividly told hardly need be said, for Jack London is
a realist as well as a writer of thrilling romances." — Cleveland Plain
Dealer.
Illustrations by George Varian. Cloth, i2mo, $ 1.50
Love of Life
" Jack London is at his best with the short story . . . clear-cut, sharp,
incisive, with the tang of the frost in it." — Record- Her a Id, Chicago.
Cloth, i2mo, $ 1.50
Jack London's Novels
White Fang
" The book might have been named ' The Call of Control ' as dis-
tinct from ' The Call of the Wild.' It is the same Alaskan life
approached from another angle. The book is in no sense a sequel
to the other, but a new, longer, more adventurous, dramatic, and
entrancing story." — Daily News.
" Mr. London's vigorous, incisive style, unconventionality, and
sympathetic understanding of Nature and of her children in the
rough, never combined to better advantage than in 'White Fang'
— by far the best thing that has come from his pen since 'The Call
of the Wild,' and in some points an even better dog story. . . .
' White Fang ' is a splendid story, but it is more than a story — it is
a wonderful study in animal nature and development."
— JVew York Titties' Saturday Revieio.
" A thrilling story of adventure . . . stirring indeed . . . and it
touches a chord of tenderness that is all too rare in Mr. London's
work." — Record-Herald, Chicago.
Illustrated in colors by CHARLES LIVINGSTON BuLL
The Call of the Wild
"A big story in sober English, and with thorough art in the con-
struction; a wonderfully perfect bit of work; a book that will be
heard of long. The dog's adventures are as exciting as any man's
exploits could be, and Mr. London's workmanship is wholly satis-
fying."— The New York Suti.
" Even the most listless reader will be stirred by the virile force
of the story, the strong, sweeping strokes with which the pictures
of the northern wilds and the life therein are painted by the nar-
rator, and the insight given into the soul of the primitive in nature.
. . . More than that, it is one of the very best stories of the year,
and one that will not be forgotten." — The Plain Dealer, Cleveland.
Illustrated in colors by Pkilip R. Goodwin and Charles
Livingston Bull; decorated by Charles Edward Hooper
Each, in cloth, 12mo, $1.50
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
PUBLISHERS, 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YOEK
Jack London's Novels
The Sea-Wolf
"Jack London's 'The Sea- Wolf is marvellously truthful. . . .
Reading it through at a sitting, we have found it poignantly inter-
esting ... a superb piece of craftsmanship."
— The New York Tribune.
" ' The Sea-Wolf,' Jack London's latest novel of adventure, is one
that every reader with good red blood in his veins will hail with
delight. 'There is no fumbling of the trigger here, no nervous and
uncertain sighting along the barrel, but the quick, decisive aim and
the bull's-eye every time." — Alail and Express, New York.
" Exciting, original, fascinating. . . . Novel and pleasing. . . .
So original, vivid, and daring that it commands attention."
— Record-Herald, Chicago.
Illustrated in colors by W. J. Ayi.wARD
The Game* ^ Transcript from Real Life
" It is told with such a glow of imaginative illusion, with such
intense dramatic vigor, with such effective audacity of phrase, that
it almost seems as if the author's appeal was to the bodily eye as
much as to the inner mentality, and that the events are actually
happening before the reader." — The New York Herald.
" One cannot read the story without a thrilling, sympathetic
interest. . . . The story is done with such a fine mingling of free-
dom and reserve, in lines so bold and straight and simple, that
it storms the imagination and takes it unresisting."
— Evening Post. Louisville.
Illustrated in color by Henry Hutt
Cloth 12mo $1.50
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
PUBLISHEBS, 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
JACK LONDON'S SOCIAL STUDIES
People of the Aby
ss
" This life has been pictured many times before — complacently and
soothingly by Prof. Walter A. Wyckoff, luridly by Mr. Stead, scientifi-
cally by Mr. Charles Booth. But Mr. London alone has made it real
and present to us." — The Independent.
Illustrated from Photographs
Cloth, $ I.JO net
The War of the Classes
" Mr. London's book is thoroughly interesting, and Mr. London's
point of view is, as may be surmised, very different from that of the
closet theorist." — Springfield Republican.
" The statements of this book are as bare and bold as the story of
the 'Sea- Wolf and present the socialists' and laborers' side of the
economic situation with vigor, clearness, and impressiveness." — The
Watchman.
Cloth, i2mo, $ I.JO net
The Road
(My Life in the Underworld)
As a literal record of life among tramps, of travel from end to end
of the country by the exercise of wits, living the life and bearing the
penalties of being a vagrant, its significance is great.
Cloth, illustrated, $ 2.00 net
By JACK LONDON and ANNA STRUNSKY
The Kempton-Wace Letters
"... They are not exactly love letters, but letters about the nature
of love, and what part romantic love plays and what part it ought
to play in our modern life." — Portland Advertiser.
Cloth, l2mo, $ I.JO
7055 96